Bloodless Ties, Orphan of Hurt
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: We all know everything about what was seen and mentioned about Shinji's background, but what if we were deceived? What if everything Shinji knew about his relatives was a falsehood? What if...someone from a time before and after Second Impact...came for him and revealed to him the truth? What if...his real mother came for him after a lifetime of looking for him?
1. Pilot

Creation began on 02-27-17

Creation ended on 03-01-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Bloodless Ties, Orphan of Hurt

A/N: The idea came to me recently, and, to my knowledge, no story of this sort has ever been attempted by anyone.

The last she ever heard of them, they had taken him from her…and left her for dead in that insufferable hospital where her father had died. It nearly shattered her with heartache when she found out from her mother what happened when she herself had been informed by her elder sister, but the only thing that kept her from losing what little sanity she had left was the thought of seeing him again, to find him and take him away from this nightmare she felt he was trapped inside of by them. And now, after almost fifteen years of getting her life together and trying to find him, she had gotten a tip from a friend of her dead boyfriend that he was in Tokyo-3, that so-called fortress city that was constantly being attacked by giant monsters, and that was where she was driving towards.

 _I know he's still alive,_ she thought, wanting so much to see him after only seeing him once. _I can't disbelieve my own heart._

In a folder on the passenger seat of her car was a picture of a fourteen-year-old boy with solemn look on his face. His eyes were the deepest, primordial brown known to the world.

She looked at the picture and thought of her father, his grandfather, whom he looked like a little in his early-teens.

"I'm looking forward to meeting you…Shinji."

-x-

As of late, Shinji just had a feeling. It wasn't a premonition or a vague glimpse into the unknown, but it was just a feeling of unease. It was like there was something unclear, or even unresolved, that was going to happen, eventually. Even in the Entry Plug of the Eva, just days after the battle with the Seventh Angel, which surprised everyone by being able to work as a pair against Units-01 and 02, the boy didn't feel like there was some sort of unwanted connection between him and the purple behemoth.

"…His synchronization with the Eva dropped by three percent, Dr. Akagi," went Maya to Ritsuko as they monitored the test between the Evas and the pilots.

"Well, he did see his father yesterday at the cemetery," Ritsuko stated, suggesting that the anniversary of the passing of his mother was a contributing factor to the drop in his scoring.

"Did you ever hear of that rumor that started shortly after the Fifth Angel attacked?" Maya asked her. "It was after Shinji was injured. He lost two pints of blood and required a transfusion."

"I only heard there was no time to do so, so he was infused with synthetic plasma instead," Ritsuko explained.

"But that's where the rumor starts. One of the nurses ran the blood he lost to try and find the right blood type, and she saw something that didn't add up."

"What was this?"

"It might've been a lab error, but Shinji's blood didn't match with Commander Ikari's. Most of the personnel's blood type is O-Positive and B-Negative, but Shinji's blood work came back as AB-Negative. Commander Ikari's blood type is A-Positive. You know what that means?"

Now Ritsuko was curious. Being a polymath, she understood that blood types revealed many things about people, including their heritage. But if the rumor was more than just a rumor, then something was clearly not right about what was going on here. Something completely not right about this at all.

"Maya," she uttered, "for now, it would be best if you didn't mention this to anyone else."

-x-

The park was quiet, but being there didn't lift Shinji' spirits. Maybe it was the lack of people or even the feeling of loneliness, but it didn't help put a smile on his face. As he sat on a bench, he watched the world pass him by.

"…Uh, I'm sorry, young man," he turned to the right and looked up at a woman standing nearby, "but is it alright if I sit down?"

She was about Misato's height, give or take, with ebony hair that probably reached past her shoulders, and brownish eyes, dressed in an outfit that looked like a black or dark blue sailor uniform with a green neckerchief.

"Uh, yes, of course," he responded, and she sat down next to him.

"Thank you," she praised him.

Suddenly, Shinji felt at ease, like his problems seemed to lessen.

"I'm Fusei Hitode, by the way," the woman introduced herself.

"Shinji Ikari," he responded, feeling more elated.

"Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too."

They both looked at the skyscrapers of the city away from the park.

"Nice city," Fusei spoke up.

"It's not all that nice," Shinji told her. "I mean, it gets attacked by giant monsters every time. It's hard to live in a place like this."

"Really?"

"The only times it seems this city isn't so awful is when there aren't any attacks."

"Wow."

Shinji wasn't sure why, but he felt comfortable talking to this woman, Fusei Hitode. And then, he noticed that she was looking at him oddly, like she had an epiphany of some sort.

"I'm sorry, do I have something on my face?" He asked her.

"No," she answered him. "Your face is fine. Just fine."

-x-

"…The rumor started, supposedly, after the Third Child was attacked by the Fifth Angel and he required a blood transfusion," Ritsuko informed Commander Ikari in his office later that evening. "How is it that he's of a rare blood type and has no relation to you?"

Even Fuyutsuki was curious about this, and the last time he ever checked, Yui was O-Negative. The fact that Shinji's blood type was AB-Negative meant that there was either a lab error made years ago…or the Third Child had no relation to either Yui or Gendo. If he was their child, he would've inherited either parent's blood type, which meant that he had to be someone else's child.

"Did you check for errors yourself?" Gendo asked her.

"Twice," she answered him.

"Check again."

-x-

"…I actually start my new job tomorrow, and I just got here earlier this afternoon," Fusei told Shinji, later inviting him to dinner at a ramen stand.

"But why would you want to come to Tokyo-3?" Shinji asked, setting his chopsticks down over his bowl. "There aren't many good opportunities here in the city. What could you possibly bring you here?"

As she picked up a dumpling, the woman responded, "For as long as I could remember, I've spent the last years of my life looking for something to give it meaning, something precious and irreplaceable. I've been looking for so long, I've forgotten nearly everything else. Why are you living here?"

"Me? Oh, well, it's, uh… I was actually told to come here by my father."

"You were told? You didn't live with him?"

"No. He just dumped me at my aunt and uncle's one day when I was little and we hardly ever saw each other."

"That's terrible. Why did he want you here?"

"To work for him."

"That's even worse."

"If only you knew how much worse."

Fusei gave him a small smile and then resumed her meal.

"Haven't you ever wanted to do something that you wanted to do before?" She asked him later.

"No," he answered; in all honesty, Shinji didn't have any dreams or ambitions. "I have never aspired to anything."

"Well, that's not good. You're, what, fourteen right now? You really need a goal that you can look forward to. Maybe a hobby of sorts. There's gotta be something you like, at least."

"Uh, there's cooking. I like to cook different dishes."

"I do, too."

Shinji felt like he could tell this woman anything, and he only met her just this afternoon. He didn't even know why, but he definitely felt a calming presence being near her. And now…he had the strangest feeling that he couldn't comprehend properly. It was different from what he felt about Ayanami…even different from what he felt about his father.

But what? And why?

"Oh, my gosh," went Fusei, checking her watch on her left hand. "It's almost ten. You should get home now, Shinji."

"Oh?" He reacted, then realized that Misato and Asuka would probably cause him tension to no end if he was out any later than now. "Oh… Yeah, it is getting late out."

He was about to take out his wallet to pay for his meal, but Fusei gently touched his right arm and stopped him.

"There's no need for you to do that," she told him. "Please, don't worry about it. Go rest up for the next day."

"I… Thank you," he said kindly to her, getting up and picking up his backpack. "I hope you have a great experience while you're here in Tokyo-3."

"And I hope you have a great day tomorrow, Shinji. Good night."

"Good night."

As he left, Fusei felt the impulse to make sure he got back to his guardian's home, but sighed at how too soon it felt to get her hopes up for something that she needed to clarify first. She had just met Shinji…and she still wanted to know more about him before she decided to talk about how she felt she had found what she had been looking for at long last. Turning to pay for the dinner, she saw the vendor picking up Shinji's bowl.

"Excuse me, sir," she spoke to him, looking at the wooden chopsticks Shinji had used, "but could you leave the chopsticks alone? I'll be taking them with me."

"But, miss, they're just disposables," he told her.

"Not everything is disposable," she told him, reaching into her bag and taking out a small, plastic bag, similar to the ones you could find at grocery stores. "There's a reason to all that we do. It all depends upon the motivation, the drive."

"But…why the boy's chopsticks?"

"Feeding my curiosity."

To be continued…

A/N: I'll stop here and leave it as another prototype. I'm hoping that it'll get some interest before continuing, eventually. I'm now convinced that nobody has ever tried this before, which makes me the very first to do so. Peace out.


	2. Mitochondria Bonds

Creation began on 03-01-17

Creation ended on 03-03-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Mitochondria Bonds

It was quite a sight as she drove into the Geo-Front. Though being used for scientific purposes, Fusei felt that such a place would've served a better purpose as another patch of land for a neighborhood community for a ravaged country.

 _Steady as you go, Fusei,_ she thought as she drove into the parking garage. _It's your first day here…and you still need to ascertain whether or not to pursue this further._

Her energy-efficient Prius parked right next to a blue Renault Alpine A310 that clearly needed more time at a mechanic because it still had dents and a busted fender. She merely sighed and shook her head, not in disgust, but out of concern for the driver and possible passengers.

 _I used to admire things that go fast,_ she thought, remembering a time where she had a desire for a motorcycle among other selfish wants. _Now, I just rather obey the speed limits._

-x-

Commander Ikari could have told her to run the tests until she was fifty years old, with heavy wrinkles and white hair, but it wouldn't have changed the end results of the tests. No, for Ritsuko Akagi, the results were as conclusive as they were off by factors that didn't make themselves known until after the rumor Maya spoke of became known to her. The Third Child's blood type didn't match his father's, which also meant that it didn't match the commander's wife, either. She had the blood types of every man, woman and child that came and left the Geo-Front on a regular basis and lived within the city of Tokyo-3 going back since its founding, and Shinji's was the only one that was of the rarest types, with only a dozen or so from before Second Impact still alive elsewhere in the country.

While she would have to question her boss about the severity of what was wrong with this picture, she had to update the boy's file for future reference, since someone had the misfortune to list his blood type as the same as his mother's…or someone who had been thought to be his mother. The sooner this matter was resolved, the better…or at the very least sufficient.

"Doctor Akagi," went Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki to her in the hall after she had updated the boy's file to have the correct blood type. "I assume you were able to make sure that the test results were rectified?"

"They were the same now as they were before they were rechecked and retested," she explained. "The Third Child's blood type is unrelated to the commander's. I'd like to run his DNA to be absolutely sure, but it wouldn't change a thing at this point. Other than the family name, these two men have no biological relation."

This had Fuyutsuki bothered. While somewhat lifting that Shinji wasn't Gendo's son, this also meant that he wasn't Yui's son, either.

"What is your theory on this?" He asked Ritsuko again.

"Someone knows more about this boy's background than I do, except they're either dead or unwilling to discuss it."

"Is there any chance that he's just an adopted child?"

"If he were an adopted child, there'd be a record explaining such. Even closed adoptions keep records for later use. The only other explanation I can't rule out yet is kidnapping."

-x-

It was a different type of synchronization test that was scheduled today for the Eva pilots. Unlike the standard tests, this was a compatibility variation, in which they would try to achieve synchronization with an Eva they don't normally work with, and Shinji was set up to try Unist-00 and 02. While he knew that Asuka was going to throw a fit at him just for sitting in the seat of the red Eva, but he wasn't really bothered much by this. It was the fact that the staff wanted him to try syncing with Unit-00, an Evangelion he heard was known to be prone with problems to an equal or greater extent than Unit-01 was known to have.

And yet, despite this all… The boy couldn't get the thought of the mysterious woman he met only yesterday out of his mind. It wasn't like he had developed a crazy or childish crush on Ms. Hitode like how Toji and Kensuke did with Misato (or any other attractive woman they laid eyes upon), but his confusion about her did cost him at least a couple of minutes of Asuka's annoyance that he didn't pay attention to.

"… _She was probably about your age,"_ he remembered telling Misato last night after he got in. _"She was nice to talk with. Maybe a little too nice, but not like anyone else I've met."_

" _Sounds like you got a crush on an older woman,"_ Misato teased him about it.

" _I seriously doubt that she was trying to hit on me. She did want to know what I wanted to do with my life, though."_

In truth, nobody had ever asked what he wanted to do with his future not relating to NERV or any other group.

The only thing he didn't tell Misato or even Asuka was Fusei's identity.

"…I hear that Dr. Akagi may have some competition from a new face that just got here today," he heard some men talking further down the hall as he headed to the locker room to put on his plugsuit. "A woman with a degree in both computers and medical care. From what I hear, she might be better than Dr. Akagi because she's not a logical individual."

"The last thing we need here is another polymath," said the other guy. "Who is she, anyway?"

Shinji entered the locker room before he could hear the name of the person that was supposed to be working here.

-x-

"…Welcome to NERV, Ms. Hitode," said Fuyutsuki to Fusei, extending his right hand in front of the young woman.

"Thank you, sir," she responded, shaking his hand. "Where shall I begin?"

"There's a compatibility test beginning in one of the testing chambers in the Eva pens in twenty minutes," he explained. "It would be the best place to start your day."

"Yes, sir."

And with that, Fusei, keeping a detailed map of the base, walked away from the command bridge of Central Dogma and towards the Eva pens. While having a sufficient degree in computer technology made her adequate to work with the MAGI, her primary specialty was that of a medical physician, mainly because she preferred the value of people's feelings over a sense of logic or being a know-it-all. Some people might have even suspected that she was after a Ritsuko Akagi's position here at NERV, but Fusei knew they couldn't be any more wrong. What would have been the point of taking some other woman's position?

Fusei didn't want this Akagi woman's job. It wouldn't have done anything to help her in her goals… And it wasn't what she wanted at all.

She stepped into an elevator, meeting with the fourteen-year-old Rei Ayanami in the process.

"Hello, there," she greeted her kindly.

Rei didn't respond, so Fusei just left it alone; it was likely because the girl was in her plugsuit, which didn't do much to hide anything, even if it did look like some tacky, exaggerated diving suit without a head covering.

-x-

Asuka hated this. It wasn't like she had standards or anything. Actually, it was like she had standards, and piloting any other Eva that was not her Unit-02 was among them. To be inside Unit-00 was like wearing a dress made of rags at a high-end art gallery, and she felt disrespected and humiliated by this.

"How much longer must I be in here?" She asked over the intercom.

"Five more minutes, Asuka," she heard Misato's voice respond.

"Ugh," she groaned; five minutes more was five minutes too long.

Outside the blue Evangelion, in the test monitoring room, Misato, Ritsuko and several other technicians were watching the pilots inside the Evas and measuring their sync ratios.

"Asuka's synchronization with Unit-00 is barely thirty-seven percent," went Maya to them.

"It's her first time inside an Evangelion she's not used to working in," Misato gave her the benefit of the doubt. "What about Rei and Shinji?"

Several feet away from the repaired and up-to-date Unit-00, Units-01 and 02 were also being monitored by the crew, with Rei inside Unit-01 and Shinji inside Unit-02.

"Rei, how's it feel to be back inside Unit-01 after so long?" Ritsuko asked the albino for the sake of keeping the commander informed about her status.

"It smells like Ikari-Kun," Rei responded, saying no more than that.

"Okay," went Misato, unsure of how to comment on that.

"Shinji's synchronization with Unit-02 is almost below the acceptable parameters," Maya informed them about the Third Child status with the red Eva.

"Even with it switched to its Japanese setting?" Ritsuko questioned.

"A five percent synchronization is equal to the Eva just lifting its arm up and just keeping it there. No more, no less."

"I guess this means the Third Child and Unit-02 simply don't go well together," said Fusei to them, typing in a series of codes for the MAGI to process for the Evas.

She mentally gagged at that designation; addressing anyone by some poor designation was just messed up.

"So it would seem, Ms. Hitode," Ritsuko agreed with her.

"Hitode?" Shinji's voice spoke up, and on the monitor showing his face, he opened his eyes, looking at the people within Unit-02's visual range. "Fusei Hitode?"

"Hello again, Shinji," she greeted him with a small smile. "How are you today?"

"I'm…doing fine. Didn't know you were working here, of all places one can work."

"It's a small world, Shinji. We just try to make it work for us."

"Hey, his sync ratio rose up to twenty-seven percent," went Maya to them, "and Rei's… What in the world?"

The alarms suddenly went off…and Unit-01 suddenly started moving, trying to break from the restraints installed.

"The synchronization is disconnecting!" One of the male technicians yelled out. "Unit-01's out of control!"

Crash! The Eva broke free of the restraints and opened its mouth, revealing its mechanical teeth.

"Rrrrrraaurgh!" The Eva roared, grabbing its head before lurching forward, towards the safety glass of the observation room, its eyes bright red. "Grrr!"

Smash! It started to punch at the glass, but it barely gave in. Smash!

Most of the people backed away as the Eva persisted in trying to break the safety glass, but Maya and Fusei remained seated and began typing in codes to deactivate the Eva.

"Complete shutdown in eight seconds," Fusei announced. "Seven…six…"

Unit-01 rammed its head against the glass when it realized that its fists weren't helping it get through, causing the top of its horn to break off.

"…Three…two…one," Maya announced, and the purple behemoth went into a complete shutdown. "Unit-01 has gone silent."

"Still reading vitals from Ms. Ayanami," Fusei added, being sure to make certain that the young girl inside the behemoth was unharmed.

"Cease compatibility testing," Ritsuko ordered; she had expected this sort of behavior from Unit-00, but to get it from Unit-01 outside of an Angel attack was new.

-x-

"…So far, we're unable to determine what caused this," Ritsuko informed Gendo in his office later that day after Rei was recovered from the Entry Plug. "The only damage sustained by Unit-01, however, is the broken horn."

"Was it caused by emotional instability on part of the pilot?" Gendo questioned.

"As far as we can tell, there was no emotional instability detected from the First Child. The synchronization between her and Unit-01 came undone before the Eva went berserk. After speaking with the First Child, who tried to re-establish the connection, could only describe one feeling that she felt was unusual."

Fuyutsuki, who was also present, asked, "What feeling?"

"Fear," she answered.

-x-

Because there was nothing wrong with Ayanami and she was allowed to go home, Shinji, who had been worried, closed his locker and vacated the locker room.

"Hey, Shinji," he saw Fusei, who was in the hall right outside the room.

"Miss Hitode," he responded, surprised by her presence. "Hello again."

"Are you alright?"

"Fine. I just… I'm glad that Ayanami is okay."

"Same here, Shinji. What are you up to right now?"

"Well, usually after Eva testing, we wash up and then go home."

"Doesn't it ever…hurt you to do this all?"

Shinji was taken aback by this question. Nobody had ever really asked if piloting the Eva caused him pain. The fact that whenever the Eva was damaged and he would experience pain because of the synchronization between them, it was something he hated about piloting the Eva.

"Yeah," he answered her.

"Then…why?" She asked him, wanting to know why he would continue to do something that caused him pain. "Why, knowing that it hurts you?"

"If I stop, then everyone suffers. If I stop, I have to go back to my aunt and uncle's, which I don't want to do. And then, there's my father."

"You sound like you can't get him to just sit down and talk to you."

"I tried to invite him to lunch once, but he turned me down. He claimed he was busy."

"Well, I… I mean, if you're available, that is, I'm free for lunch tomorrow. We could…talk some more, if you'd like."

"Sure. I mean, thank you, Ms. Hitode."

Fusei gave a small smile and then extended her left hand to him.

"I hope the rest of your day brings you relief, Shinji," she told him.

He shook her hand and then walked away. And again, he found himself wondering why he felt so at ease around this woman. Whatever the reason, he really had hopes to understand it, no matter how long it took him.

-x-

Fear was an unusual emotion to be exhibited by an Evangelion. Unit-01, especially. Even as Fuyutsuki watched as the purple behemoth was getting its horn reset to its armored head, he pondered on why the Eva would go berserk out of fear. There was no rational explanation to this random behavior.

"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki," he turned on the bridge and faced Ritsuko. "We can't find a reason for the sudden berserker state."

"Your opinion? Personal, not professional."

"Personally? I wanted to think it was the First Child, but it would've been understandable with Unit-00. With Unit-01, I'm not sure what to think. But something clearly set the Eva off."

"On a lighter note, our new employee kept her cool in front of Unit-01. She had only seen the Evas today and didn't flinch from the sight of one out of control."

"True, but that's what bothers me a little. Most people would want to transfer to a different position or facility after seeing an Eva out of control, even those that started on their first day. Either this Hitode woman has nerves of steel, no pun intended, or she's crazy."

"She did seem friendly with Shinji, though. Did you see the way he looked when he spoke with her? Not many people here actually speak with the pilots like they're just regular people, like they're meant to be regular people."

"What do we know about her?"

"Fusei Hitode. Almost thirty years old, single, skilled in computers and medical aid, no arrest record, comes from a middle-class family that resided in Tokyo before Second Impact. Nothing that would seem odd or unusual about her, and anyone that knows her better than us is either dead or elsewhere."

"Still, people with nerves of steel are better equipped to handle the stress of working here. Whatever her reasons, they're not likely to interfere with her work."

-x-

"You were pretty friendly with the new employee, Shinji," went Misato to the young man as he, Asuka and she sat at the table for dinner. "Girlfriend?"

"I don't find that funny, Misato," Shinji responded, actually offended by her question.

"It's not like he could get her to like him that much to want to date him," went Asuka, disgusted with the mere idea that anyone could like the Third Child.

"It's nothing like that, Asuka. We met yesterday and talked. That's all that happened."

"Yeah, I bet."

"You're like this only because they had me inside Unit-02 for that test. Hey, I had nothing to do with their decision, only what I say and who I say what to for whatever reason."

"The only good thing that happened was that they canceled the rest of the test after First's violent episode in your Eva before she could set foot in mine."

"Miss Hitode helped to stop Unit-01 before Ayanami got hurt while we were restrained in the other Evas. It was her first day, and she didn't think to leave. I'd like to know why someone like her, who seems like she could do better than NERV, would want to come to Tokyo-3 and work around my father, though."

"Maybe some people just need employment, Shinji," Misato suggested.

"She didn't strike me as the type to want money that desperately. I don't know, she just seems… It's the way she talks to me, something about speaking with her that feels so… caring."

"Maybe she specializes in talk therapy. NERV doesn't have a lot of therapists."

Shinji finished his dinner first and responded, "Maybe. Only God knows I could use someone to talk to that actually wants to talk without including the Eva as the primary reason."

-x-

"…How soon will you have the results?" Fusei asked on her phone at her apartment on the outskirts of the city, looking out on her patio balcony at the taller buildings as they illuminated the night sky. "Well, please, let me know the moment they come in. Thank you again. I owe you one. Actually, I owe you seven now."

She hung up and sat down in a blue ball chair, sighing at the time it would take for her contact to get in touch with her about the request she made to him, but once she knew for sure, she could focus more on how to go about her goal. Her goal, and its outcome and future afterward, was all she had to keep her going…and she couldn't rest until she accomplished what motivated her for a long time.

"Nothing else will mean anything unless I find out the truth," she uttered, looking up at the stars. "Two days, at least. For them, I can wait two days."

To be continued…

A/N: Here's the second chapter. Is anyone able to see what's going on here? Does the first half of the title make any sense? There is a measure of actual science involved to explain a part of the story, you know.


	3. Sinful Reminders

Creation began on 03-03-17

Creation ended on 03-07-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Sinful Reminders

Some would say that Gendo really despised his son for unjust reasons to not want anything to do with him aside from using him as a pilot for the Evangelion. Others would assume that he was just incapable of feeling any measure of affection or concern for him. But most were never aware of one thing about their opinions on the matter: They were absolutely right that there was no love for the boy from his old man.

In his office by himself, Gendo looked into his desk and pulled out a small, framed photo. It was of himself and Yui from before Second Impact, back when they had started with NERV's previous incarnation, GEHIRN. And then, she got hurt…and they both did something so wrong that all they could do was hope that nobody would ever find out, since the hospital they had been in was heavily damaged and the influx of refugees and patients was greater than the medical personnel that had been equally crippled by the devastation that leveled the majority of Tokyo.

 _She was dead,_ he thought, recalling the girl laying in the small cot, surrounded by people that were either already dead or dying from lack of medical treatment. _She was probably all alone after what happened to her. It wasn't like we were hurting anyone._

Though, in every sense of the matter, this long-hidden secret would hurt one person if they ever found out. And now, because of some rumor that started with the brutality of the Fifth Angel and because some people just had to poke their noses in such a private matter, he had to make sure that the truth, no matter what happened, remained secret.

-x-

Ritsuko's grim expression after taking a more thorough look at Ms. Hitode's profile was a heavy one. As soon as she looked at the section where she listed her blood type, she wondered about the reliability of today's technology when it came to genetics.

 _AB-Negative?_ She thought, curious about how many people left in the nation had this rare blood type. _She's the same as the Third Child. Is it a coincidence?_

-x-

Fuyutsuki no longer had a curious mind about what he was finding out about after Dr. Akagi informed him of the additional tests she performed on the Third Child's blood samples. Now, he just wanted to know who this boy belonged to, and it certainly wasn't either the worst man he ever had an opinion on or his former student. While blood had been stated to be thicker than water, there was no blood between this widower and this young teen that had been looking for his acknowledgment. And the only person that knew anything was either going to confess to him…or he would cross a line of his own that would be full of regret.

"Ikari," he addressed Gendo, walking into his office. "What are you hiding about him?"

"What are you talking about?" Gendo questioned him.

"You know damn well what I'm talking about. The rumor is small, but the impact is heavy. Blood doesn't lie when you look at every layer of it. Who is Shinji and how'd you and Yui get him? Because he is clearly not your child."

"That is a private matter."

"Privacy is something that NERV infringes on all the time. Nobody is exempt from this. Now, you either tell me who he really is…or so help me, I will walk away from this after telling the boy you made pilot the Eva that you're not really his father. What do you think he will do after hearing that?"

Gendo wasn't threatened by his former professor, but had to say, "It's not for anyone, not even you, to know anything, Fuyutsuki."

"Except the belief that the Eva only works if the pilot's mother is deceased isn't much to believe in now. Not when one of the pilot's mother may not even be deceased if she's not even related to him. Who knows, maybe his mother is still alive."

"Unlikely. And even if he knew, he wouldn't walk away from NERV."

"Now, you don't know that. Who is he really and where did you get him from?"

-x-

It was decided by Ritsuko that there wouldn't be any direct testing with the Evas for the day after the incident with Unit-01 the previous day. Instead, the pilots would just have their synchronization scores measured in the testing plugs.

"So far, they're stable," went Maya to Ritsuko.

"We could drop the intensity by three percent," suggested Fusei, typing in random code segments on her console.

"If we do, we'd be going too easy on them," Ritsuko informed her.

"But if you push them too far, they can break from the strain. Children are not as resilient these days as they were years ago. If you break them, you're responsible for what they may do."

Misato, who was also present for the test, was impressed by Ms. Hitode's suggestion, but had to wonder where her suggestion came from, not knowing her well enough to understand if it came from a logical viewpoint or an emotional one.

"What do you do…when you're not here, Ms. Hitode?" She asked her.

"I volunteered part-time at a small clinic in Tokyo-2 two years ago when I was working towards my license to practice medicine. Currently, I'm pretty much no different from a medical intern. I live by the clock, the concept of time, with very little deviation, which is welcomed."

"Any kids?"

Fusei didn't speak for a short while; if Misato had read the woman's file, she would know that this woman's relatives were either dead or lived far from Tokyo-3.

"Never experienced the joy of having any," she then responded, but she sounded…almost as though she were heartbroken over answering.

"That's really sad, Ms. Hitode," they heard Shinji say to the woman.

"It's okay, though," she responded to him. "We live in a time where trying to have children today is a potential death sentence because of the Angels and other acts of terrorism. If I had any today, how would I know they'd be safe from harm?"

"I mean you no disrespect, Ms. Hitode, but you sound like the type of person that should have kids of your own," Shinji told her, which surprised Ritsuko, Misato, Asuka and Rei to hear him say this to someone he barely knew.

"No disrespect taken, Shinji," she responded again. "I appreciate your opinion."

-x-

This wasn't as extreme as what really caused Second Impact, but Fuyutsuki felt that Shinji deserved to know the truth, even if it meant Gendo was going to make sure he didn't say anything to the boy. He had threatened to walk away from NERV, and now he had to make sure that he made good on his word to tell Shinji the truth because Gendo certainly wasn't. Maybe it would cost him his life, but at least the boy would hear his final words and start to question his relationship with his parents, who he thought were his parents.

All he had to do now was find the boy and make sure he heard him.

"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki," he heard Captain Katsuragi as he saw her in the hallway.

"Captain Katsuragi," he greeted her, "have you seen the Third Child?"

"Shinji? He's heading down to the cafeteria with Ms. Hitode. They agreed to have lunch today."

"Thank you."

He then walked past her, leaving her confused by his tone; it was like he was panicked or worried by something.

-x-

"…I didn't think you'd bring your own lunches while in here," said Fusei to Shinji as they sat at one of the tables next to a glass screen of falling water, seeing that the boy had brought a lunch with him.

"Yeah," he sighed. "Misato, my guardian, isn't exactly the type that can cook, and I've never seen Asuka do so, either. So it falls on me to prepare our meals."

"Sometimes, I try to prepare my meals for the next day in case I don't have the time to prepare on the same day I head out to work. The meals they have down here are anything but adequate."

"I know, and they smell stale. I don't understand how anyone can handle such a disgrace."

"Eh-heh! Years of practice is an example."

"So…how are you liking Tokyo-3 so far?"

"I have to say, it's not what I expected from a fortress city. I haven't explored the entirety of it yet, but some of the places I have seen just make it stand out as a place that… I don't want to sound cruel or old-fashioned, but I just find it difficult to believe that any would find it sane to live in a city that gets attacked every now and then. Of course, I'm not one to talk, having just relocated here, but…the government could've done better than this."

Shinji, raising his chopsticks up to his mouth to deposit a piece of dumpling into it, then set the sticks down and responded, "Yeah. The government could've done better. Even though I was told Tokyo-3 is a city I help to protect against the Angels…it would mean more to me if such praise came from my father."

Dumping ranch dressing onto her salad, Fusei uttered, "Your father? You…you mean, he has never praised you? For anything you do?"

"No, never."

"I mean, has anyone in your family ever acknowledged any of your attempts? Your success or failures? Graduating from school? Getting picked for a team? Not even asking you how your day was for the sake of knowing?"

Shinji nodded his head in the negative as he ate his dumplings.

"I can't believe this," Fusei told him. "I mean, it's not right, not being praised or acknowledged by your relatives. Even if you have just one relative in your life, they should tell you that they're proud of your accomplishments, whether they're big ones or just mediocre to the eye, that you do something that earns you their acknowledgment, their acceptance."

"It's hard to accomplish things when you don't have any dreams or ambitions. The last school I was in before I was transferred to the one here, I wrote an essay about my life and everything that happened…or didn't happen in it…and the teacher yelled at me for not taking it serious."

"So…what was your life like before you came to Tokyo-3 because your father told you to?"

"My… It should all say what on my file. Anyone with the appropriate access can get to it and know about me."

"Except that's only what NERV put on your file. They only have some records of your background from a certain angle that isn't absolute, like your school records or something like that. They don't say things in your file like what your hobbies are, what music you like to listen to, whether other people liked you or you grew up on the streets and had to steal to survive, stuff like that, Shinji. And…I don't have access to your NERV file. Even if I did…I'd much rather hear from you, the one I ask directly instead of someone else, about what you experienced in your past…because anyone else can say what they want about you and it may be nothing more than lies, never the truth."

Shinji was touched by her words. He truly was.

"Well, I…" He tried to speak, but his memories of his life before Tokyo-3, the Eva and the Angels, made it feel a little difficult to explain because he didn't feel any happiness in any of them. "After my mother died, my father left me with my aunt and uncle. I begged him not to leave me, but he never looked back. My cousin poked fun at me because of a rumor that my father killed my mother…and my aunt smacked me whenever I fought back about it. They…they didn't want me around because they said I reminded them too much of my parents. They only kept me because my father paid them to look after me. For as long as I can remember, I've had to carry a stigma of being my father's son, and that made it impossible to even try to fit in. So I got by without friends, kept to myself, just trying to make it through the day without someone bringing up my horrible stigma."

 _And what a stigma it is indeed,_ thought Fusei; this was like a foul example of the sins of the father being forced upon the child against their will because of the father's atrocities. _And it might not even be his stigma to carry._

 _Why do I feel like this in front of her?_ Shinji thought, feeling a little better talking about his past to Ms. Hitode. _Why do I feel like I can tell her anything?_

He even told her about the rainy day he found a bike among a junk pile and just thought that it should go to a lost and found someplace, and how a cop falsely accused him of stealing the bike. Of course nobody believed him whenever he tried to explain that it wasn't true what the cop believed. Even his aunt slapped him for trying to lie about it.

This upset Fusei, who felt that, simply because of the stigma, nobody would believe anything that this young man would say at all. To most people that knew the name "Ikari", they thought of Gendo Ikari, and when they saw Shinji Ikari, they thought only of him being no better than a man that walked out on his child.

"It's not fair," she uttered, "the way you've been treated by others."

"It's okay," he responded, even though it really wasn't okay. "I don't live with them, anymore, so I don't have to put up with them."

"But…it must be awful for you. To go places, see people…only to be reminded of…of those depraved times where those people never considered your feelings."

"Nobody's perfect."

"Nobody should have to be perfect, just humane. I truly don't understand why, after Second Impact, everyone started blaming everyone else for everything that was made wrong with the world. If people make mistakes, they should own up to them and try to fix them with the least amount of suffering, not pin the blame of others that were either there to help you or just to watch you do something. I still wanted to believe that we could all be better than the sum of our past…in a maimed present leading into an unknown future that could still be good if we did things differently than we might've done before. I did one thing wrong in my past…and I'm still trying to fix it."

"What did you do that was…wrong?" Shinji asked her, but then realized he crossed a line. "I'm sorry. It must be a private matter. Forget I asked, please."

"No, it's okay," she assured him. "It was years ago. A lifetime ago. People can sometimes forget…just as easily as some people can forget…to forgive others for acts that were better left uncommitted to begin with."

Before they could resume their eating, a male voice uttered out, "Shinji Ikari!"

Shinji dropped his chopsticks and looked towards the entrance to the cafeteria, seeing Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, looking out of breath.

He looked towards the boy and Ms. Hitode and quickly approached them.

"I'm sorry, but I really have to talk to you," he told Shinji, sounding like something bad was going to happen soon. "It might sound crazy, but all I ask is that you believe me when what I say is the truth, because there was no way that man was going to let you know at all. It's about your parents, you see… They're not who you were led to believe they are."

"What?" Shinji responded, confused. "What…what are you talking about?"

Suddenly, three of NERV's security guards came into the cafeteria and went over towards where Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki was.

"They're not really your parents, Shinji," he quickly told the boy as the guards grabbed him and started to remove him from the room against his will. "They're not your parents, Shinji! They're not related to you at all! Don't believe a word that man says!"

When he was removed completely, Shinji was confused with what he was told. Why would Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki tell him something that seemed unlikely? Sure, he and his father were as distant as he cared to believe and almost impossible for them to get along with each other, but…to have no relation? He had always heard people say terrible things about his father and the whispers about his mother whose face he could no longer recall, but nothing this outlandish.

-x-

Gendo was confident that the Third Child wouldn't question whatever Fuyutsuki might've told him. And once he had the elder incarcerated in the brig with a cover story for why he was spouting some nonsense, things should go back to being under control. The less anyone knew, the better. He didn't need anyone else knowing the truth.

And now that he thought about it as he sat at his desk, he decided that he couldn't risk Dr. Akagi knowing what she knew, either. Whatever she did find out, he had to make sure no one else knew, no matter what.

-x-

Even though he was told (if there was a proper way of even saying "instructed to forget") to disregard what Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki had spoken to him, Shinji found himself unable to not question the elder's words. It was just the way he told him, right out of the blue, that his parents weren't really his parents. Why would he tell him this, and why now?

"…Hey, Third!" He heard Asuka yell at him, reminding him that he was back at Misato's apartment. "Hello?! Anyone home?!"

"Could you stop yelling at me, please?" He asked her. "People like to think in silence sometimes, and being yelled at doesn't help."

"You've been silent ever since your lunch date with that woman ended abruptly by a crazy man spouting nonsense to you."

"And that's what boggles me. He spouted nonsense towards me. Me. He could've spouted nonsense to anyone else around him, but instead of them, he came looking for me."

"And you think of this…because?"

"You don't find it odd?"

"No, I don't."

"One of the doctors stated that he was off his meds," said Misato to them as she lay on the floor in front of the television with Pen-Pen, "but that doesn't make any sense, whatsoever."

"Huh?" Asuka went. "What do you mean?"

"I've looked at his record, Asuka. Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki's almost sixty years old. It's odd that a man as old as him, with no known history of mental illness, suddenly decides to go and have a nervous breakdown and single out one person out of the thousands at NERV. Plus, I spoke with him when he came and asked me where Shinji was today, and he was very competent. There was no indication of any need for meds for mental illness."

"Then if he wasn't crazy, why would anyone incarcerate him?" Shinji asks her.

-x-

"…It's in everyone's best interest if they put this all behind them," Gendo told Ritsuko that evening in his office.

"Very well, but there's something you should know that may complicate things," she responded. "It may just be a coincidence, but there's only one other person here that has the same blood type as the boy."

"Who?"

-x-

Her first night shift, and Fusei was already feeling the lack of caffeine in her body. Sitting on the bridge over the MAGI was boring and exhausting.

"It gets easier after a while," went Maya to her.

"How long is 'a while' down here?" She asked her.

"A month and being hardwired on coffee."

"Not soon enough."

Fusei got up and left the bridge in search of coffee for her body right now.

Maya noticed that the older woman had left a sketchpad in her seat…and decided to let her curiosity get the better of her.

 _Some people think this Hitode woman is after Senpai's position,_ she thought, picking up her pad and flipping it open. _What secrets does she have?_

In the pad were sketches of people and places, detailed in life-like variations, as though they had been taken from the real world.

 _So beautiful,_ she thought, never thinking this older as some sort of artist, and looked at the last page that was being worked on. "Hmm?"

Although it was a work-in-progress, there was enough of the sketch to make out a young boy that had some resemblance to the Third Child, sitting on a bench. Then, she quickly put the pad back in the woman's chair and returned to her own before she came back. It wasn't really her business, but she thought that the woman was honestly trying to be friends with the Eva pilot. She had seen them earlier in the cafeteria before the Sub-Commander was taken away after ranting about how Commander Ikari and his late wife weren't really his parents.

When Fusei returned with a thermos of coffee, she looked at her sketchpad and noticed that it had been moved; she and Ms. Ibuki were the only ones on night shift duty on the bridge in Central Dogma.

"Miss Ibuki?" She asked. "Did you touch my sketchpad?"

To be continued…


	4. DNA doesn't lie

Creation began on 03-07-17

Creation ended on 03-11-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

DNA doesn't lie

She was exhausted, and the coffee in her was wearing off as she got back in her apartment. All Fusei wanted to do with the next day was sleep and regain energy from a night of watching nothing but random segments of code running through the MAGI, particularly the part identified as Balthasar; for some reason, she felt uncomfortable around the parts known as Melchior and Casper.

"Ah," she groaned as she sat on her bed and took off her shoes. "Kami, I will never wear heels unless I have to attend formal events where they're a requirement…and I will never attend formal events where they're a requirement."

Laying down after changing out of her clothes from the previous day, Fusei turned on a fan and let herself drift off to sleep.

Ring-ring-ring! She awoke, hours later, to the sound of her phone ringing.

"Mmm…hmm…" She groaned as she turned in her bed, reaching for it on her bedside table. "Hmm!"

Because she wasn't looking with her eyes, she had difficulty reaching for it, but managed to achieve the task and grabbed her phone and answered the waiting call.

"Hello, this is Fusei Hitode, who is this?" She greeted the caller.

"Fusei, it's Tetsuo Katagiri, calling with the results of the favor you asked me to do for you," a male voice uttered on the other end of the phone call. "The tests all came back positive from the sample you sent me."

Fusei slowly got up into a sitting position on her bed.

"Are you sure?" She asked him. "Am I dreaming this conversation?"

"Try pinching yourself, because I wouldn't lie to you with a false positive. I ran the tests seven times just to be sure, and each one was the same. How many people can you think of that have the same mitochondrial DNA as you do…and aren't dead?"

"With the exception of my mother and sister, just this revelation. Thank you, Tetsuo. You don't know how much this eases my mind to know that one part of my search has ended."

"You're welcome, but now comes the challenging question: How are you going to go about this further? You found who you were looking for, but they don't know who you really are yet."

Fusei sighed and pondered how to respond to this revelation.

"I'll tell them," she told him. "I'll tell him."

"Good luck in reaching out to him."

"Thank you."

She hung up and set the phone down. It felt like a dream, even though she had pinched herself three times in order to prove that it wasn't. She had almost given up hope on ever finding out where the person she had spent the last fourteen years of her life looking for. And there was no turning back now.

-x-

There was hardly a soul within the Geo-Front that believed the Sub-Commander was some sort of nutter off their meds when he seemed so calm and stable. Everyone from the Eva crew to the lowly bridge support staff didn't think he was crazy, but the rumor that started after he was incarcerated was starting to spread like a virus without a vaccine because nobody had the full story about it. This…and the unexpected Eva test set up for the next evening.

It was around the same time that Fusei had returned after her day off to recoup.

"Hey, there!" She heard someone say behind her as she walked down the hall to the testing room. "You must be Ms. Hitode."

She felt a hand touch her left shoulder…and she turned around, had a Taser in her right hand, and let the person have it in the neck.

"Aah!" The guy, none other than Ryoji Kaji himself, gasped and fell against the wall beside him, unable to believe that he was stunned by a woman with a Taser. "Ow…"

"Oh! Ah-ha-ha!" Fusei heard a woman laugh further down the hall, and saw Captain Katsuragi covering her mouth. "I didn't think anyone would try to incapacitate him before."

"I have this problem with people touching me without my consent," she explained the reason for her Taser usage. "And I'm not used to firearms and causing someone to die. So I carry a Taser. They don't kill, but they don't leave the victim feeling happy, either."

Misato came over and looked down at Kaji.

"Believe it or not, I think he was trying to hit on you," she told Fusei, noticing the Taser she used was very top-of-the-line…or just looked that way because it was kept clean-looking. "This is Ryoji Kaji. We used to date during college. He seems to enjoy trying to womanize or hit on beautiful girls. Pity, he doesn't return the advances of Asuka."

Fusei looked down at Kaji and said, "I was in a committed relationship with my boyfriend before he passed away. I'm not looking for that sort of commitment here."

"Oh? How long ago was this committed relationship of yours?" Misato asked, curious.

"Fifteen years ago."

The purple-haired realized that fifteen years was among the longest lengths of time a person chose to stay true to a lost love.

"My apologies," she told the woman as she put her Taser away.

"It's okay. You didn't know. Not many people like to explain everything about their past, but things like this…don't need to be kept secret like they're something so personal that nobody else would understand…unless they are personal."

"What was he like back then?"

"Quiet but friendly, perceptive and devoted. Not a tough guy, but not a pushover. He wanted to be a doctor, to help those in need."

"Like you?"

"Yeah."

Then, they helped Kaji up and carried him down the hall to the testing room.

"I swear to God, if you try to hit on me or touch me again, I will tase you where the light don't shine," Misato heard Fusei say to him, earning a chuckle from her.

"Wish I had your tenacity," she told her.

"I wish things could be easier done than merely said."

-x-

"…Is it really necessary for him to be here?" Shinji asked, uncomfortable with the fact that his…that Commander Ikari was present to watch the test being carried out by the crew.

"He just wants to be ensured that we get the expected results of this test," explained Fusei to him.

"It's just…"

"Bothersome?"

"Yeah."

Fusei, monitoring Shinji inside Unit-01, slightly turned her head to the direction of where Gendo stood behind everyone else in the room, but never turned to look at him.

"Your current score is about fifty-seven percent," said Ritsuko to Shinji.

Fusei then typed down a code to decrease the resistance in the synchronization by a small margin, resulting in Shinji's score to rise by twenty-three percent.

"How'd you do that, Ms. Hitode?" Misato asked her.

"It's just an optimization algorithm I've been working on."

Misato then looked at her like something was off with her. It was the way she sat at her console, the way her face looked, even her eyes. It was…almost like…she were facing…

"Is there something wrong, Ms. Katsuragi?" Fusei asked her.

Misato shook her head and responded, "No, it's just… It's kinda hard, reading your face."

"Heh," she chuckled slightly. "I'm an enigma half the time."

"Everything's running smoothly with all three pilots and Evas," went Maya to everyone. "We might not have a repeat of the previous test."

"Please, don't jinx it," Misato told the tomboyish woman.

"Yes, please. Don't jinx it," added Fusei. "We don't need a repeat variation of what we're doing here."

In front of them, Unit-01, with its decorative horn repaired, tied to the wall behind it.

"If all goes well, we should be able to implement the autopilot project with no problems," said Ritsuko.

"You mean, the Dummy System," Maya corrected, uncomfortable with that project.

"Bee in your bonnet, Ms. Ibuki?" Fusei asked, typing in codes for Units-00 and 02.

"There's some errors surrounding the Dummy System," she explained. "An earlier attempt at starting it resulted in at least three casualties."

Fusei stopped typing momentarily and looked at her. To know that three people died because of an earlier incident involving the Evas didn't help to give NERV good graces from the public.

"Maybe now, we can avoid a repeat of what happened," she told her, and resumed typing. _I don't want to lose him before I can finally get to know him more._

Within Unit-01, Shinji had a hard time looking at Ms. Hitode without being bothered by Commander Ikari. After what happened the other day, he was starting to have his doubts over whether or not to simply disregard being told to forget what Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki had told him about his parents.

" _They're not your parents!"_ The Sub-Commander's voice repeated in his mind. _"They're not your parents! Don't listen to that man!"_

 _If what he said is true, then who are my parents?_ He wondered, his curiosity coming from a place of concern…and longing.

It would be a whole hour-and-a-half before the test was finished and the pilots would be allowed to go home for the day.

-x-

"…You don't think the Third Child will do as instructed?" Gendo asked Ritsuko later that evening in his office, referring to the boy being told to forget about what Fuyutsuki told him.

"It's a possibility," she explained her belief. "We don't know how the boy's mind works, and with the rumors, it's only a matter of time before he does start to question who his parents are…and you're not exactly one to give answers to his questions. He's going to likely want to know why your blood types don't match if he doesn't already know."

"The less the Third Child knows, the easier he'll be to manage."

"And…what of Ms. Hitode?"

"Leave her be for now. It may just be a coincidence."

"One in a million? One in ten-million? One in ten? I hope that it is just a coincidence."

-x-

"Ayanami?" Shinji stopped in front of the elevator, seeing Rei inside it, looking at him.

"Ikari-Kun," she spoke. "You…shouldn't talk with Dr. Hitode any further."

"What? Why?"

The albino got out of the elevator and stood in front of him.

"Does she not seem unusual to you?" She asked him.

"No."

"She is…unusually friendly towards you."

"But that's no reason to stop talking to her."

"She may try to take advantage of you."

"Why would I want to do that to Shinji, Ms. Ayanami?" They both turned and saw Fusei, carrying a medical chart board with her.

Shinji bowed his head to her, but Rei remained impassive.

"How is being friendly unusual to you, Ms. Ayanami?" She asked her.

"Such behavior, especially in light of the recent incarceration of Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki and the berserker state of Unit-01 during the compatibility test, is often brought into question with one's behavior. As such, friendly behavior between adults and children raises questionable insight into the individuals involved." Rei explained.

"You mean, it might be looked upon as my being an adult fraternizing in unacceptable ways with Shinji, who is a young teen," Fusei responded. "Rest assured, Ms. Ayanami, I don't prey upon young people like a predator. That's not the type of person I am."

"It is not only that, Dr. Fusei, it is a bothering matter that may be only a coincidence."

"Which is?"

"Why a woman such as yourself possesses an unusually-mild resemblance to the very boy you wish to engage in conversation?"

"What?" Shinji responded to this; he hadn't noticed it before, but speaking to Fusei did feel a little bit like he was speaking to someone that was like himself, only talkative and wanting to know about him, not the Eva. "But…I don't see any comparison between us, Ayanami. It must just be a coincidence."

But to Rei, the resemblance, while very mild…was there in front of her. The woman didn't bear a resemblance outright, but if one looked carefully, they could see that she was like an older echo of the Third Child if he was a girl.

"Are you off to home, Shinji?" Fusei asked the boy.

"Um, yeah," he answered her.

"I was…hoping to be able to speak with you again. Are you free tomorrow?"

"I'm free during lunch."

"Okay, then. I look forward to speaking with you further. Have a pleasant night."

"Thank you, Ms. Hitode. You have a nice night, as well."

Fusei left the two to resume her previous trek to wherever it was she was going to, leaving the young teens alone again.

"I felt nothing wrong with talking to her, Ayanami," Shinji tried to his own feelings from his conversation with Fusei. "She seems like a good person… A really good person."

"People with good intentions are often people one should be conscious about avoiding," Rei stated. "People can't know each other completely, no matter how much they talk."

Shinji's eyes recalled that time in the cemetery where he was with Commander Ikari, who said the exact same thing. And it was disturbing to hear this from the strange-yet-beautiful young girl he worked with. But there was just something about talking to Fusei that seemed…to disregard Commander Ikari's belief that people couldn't understand each other because she seemed to want to know whatever there was to know about him.

"But we could if we wanted to," he told her, trying to establish this as fact. "I mean, it's not entirely true that people can't completely understand one another. If we make efforts in conversation, if we're patient and show restraint, then we can understand people. I'll be honest, but I don't know Asuka because she says nothing about herself that is actually worth talking about. She only once spoke about how she feels that she's a special person because she got chosen to pilot the Eva. I don't really know her because she doesn't say anything about herself that really matters. I don't really know about you because you don't talk about yourself outside of your reason for piloting the Eva…and we're talking. Of course, I'm no exception because I don't say anything about myself to anyone… Until I started talking to Ms. Hitode…who wanted to know about me. My mother died when I was little…and my father left me with her relatives for over ten years…and they didn't even care about me like they cared about their son. They thought I was just like my parents, but I can't see any comparison between the three of us because I don't even have a picture of my mother and my father never really talks about her. I don't have any friends that get me, that really get me. I'm virtually looked down upon by people because of my father, and now I'm in a position where I face creatures that want to destroy the world for unknown reasons that I can neither understand why or accept…and…as much as I hate that man…as much as I could wish what the Sub-Commander said to me the other day was true, that he and this dead woman aren't who I thought they were… I find myself unable to walk away from this agonizing state of being."

Rei didn't say anything, but there was no doubt that what Shinji had told her had sunk into her head.

Shinji then pushed a button on the wall and stepped into the elevator beside the two, leaving the girl alone where she stood.

It would be another five minutes before Rei thought of vacating the base.

And it would be another two minutes before Fusei, who never went as far as two feet down the hall so that she was out of sight, but close enough to eavesdrop on Shinji's conversation with the girl, learning more about the boy…and feeling for him.

 _If only we could go back to that day our lives were turned upside-down,_ she thought, and walked away.

-x-

"…Ahh," went Kaji, still reeling from the effects of being tazed by a woman he was trying to flirt with.

"Yeah, that's what you get for trying to put the moves on a woman with a Tazer and the will to use it," said Misato to him while on the bridge in Central Dogma. "You're a sucker for pretty faces."

"It wasn't even like that, Katsuragi," he defended his actions. "I was merely curious about her."

"What is there to be curious about Fusei Hitode?"

"She seems to like the Third Child."

"And that's a bad thing?"

""You mean to say, she doesn't rub you the wrong way when she engages in conversation with him? I mean, some new employees would want to know about the Eva from one that pilots, but not this woman. Instead of the Eva, she wants to know about him. Hardly anyone here has conversations unrelated to the Eva."

"Well, that may be the only thing that sets her apart from others. That…and how Shinji seems to like her because she seems to really enjoy talking to him about non-Eva-related things. How many people can you think of that want to do something like that with anyone like him?"

""Not many, including his classmates. Where is she now?"

-x-

The medical inventory at NERV was not like the hospital where she interned at. There were drugs that weren't even on the market that were able to treat STDs better than the ones currently available, even vials of vaccines that worked better than the ones she used to administer to little children. The fact that this paramilitary agency possessed such resources made it a little questionable to Fusei on how the United Nations could permit them to have such things that could've helped a lot of people all over what was left of the planet and withhold them from hospitals and other clinics that had to scrape up temporary solutions that were comparable to snake oil. And as she was making sure the inventory was up to date on everything, the young woman noticed, when she went to check on the medical unit's blood bank reserve, was that they didn't have much of a selection of necessary blood types for people.

"No O-Negative," she confirmed on the computer's database. "That certainly won't do for them. This is all blood that can only help those of the same type. I wonder…"

Since she had access to the NERV medical database, she could access the medical files of everyone listed, and she started with Ritsuko Akagi to know her blood type. The faux-blond was B-Negative, so she had to make sure that there was blood of her type to ensure that she and others of her type were at least covered medically. Then, she looked up Kozo Fuyutsuki, finding his blood type was A-Positive, so he was in the clear, but found that he wasn't on any sort of medication for his mental state. She didn't see any indication that he was ever mentally ill to begin with.

 _Wanting to take blood from people believed to be mentally unstable can be used as an excuse to converse with them if they're capable of communication,_ she thought, hoping that she could talk to the Sub-Commander about the reason for his incarceration instead of being checked into the hospital for psychiatric treatment. _The medical staff here have to follow the same oath to first do no harm, same as I do when I took the oath._

Grabbing a syringe and a few empty vials, she left the ward to where the Sub-Commander was located.

-x-

Locked in a cage. That was how Fuyutsuki felt every time he looked around his cell. And while he was officially incarcerated for mental illness, he was just in there to keep him from telling the Third Child any more about his lack of familial ties to his parents, jeopardizing his usefulness to Gendo.

Suddenly, the door to his cell opened, and the elder saw Dr. Hitode step inside.

"Sir," she bowed her head to him as the door closed behind her.

Still shaking off the effects of a heavy sedative he was administered to slur his speech and mobility, Fuyutsuki slowly got up from the cot he was laying on and stood weakly in front of her.

"No, no, sit down, sir," Fusei urged him, helping him back down. "I need to draw blood from you, but I also wanted to ask you some questions…if you're willing to talk."

"This room…be bugged," he slurred to her, trying to say that the cell was likely bugged with monitoring devices.

He felt something slipped into his left hand and looked down at it, seeing that it was a small phone with a note app currently on. On the touchscreen, a message on the note app read, "I NEED TO TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU SAID TO SHINJI THE OTHER DAY. DON'T TALK ABOUT IT. WRITE IT DOWN WHILE TRYING TO SPEAK OF SOMETHING ELSE IF YOU CAN."

"Do you trust me enough with a needle, sir?" She asked him.

"Yes…" He slurred, and then tried to write on the touchscreen phone.

Fusei set up the syringe and rolled up the sleeve of Fuyutsuki's right arm.

"So, how long have you been working here, sir?" She asked him, and he gave her back the phone with his left hand.

"Too…long…" He answered her, but on her phone, he typed, "GENDO AND YUI IKARI, WHOM I HAD BELIEVED TO BE THE BOY'S PARENTS, ARE NOT HIS PARENTS. THEIR BLOOD TYPES DON'T MATCH."

Sticking his sterilized area of skin with the syringe, Fusei attached the vial tube to the syringe and began to draw blood, allowing her to quickly type on her phone.

"IS HIS BLOOD TYPE AB-NEGATIVE?" She wrote down to him.

"I feel…as though…" He uttered to her, hiding his answer, but slowly moving his eyes up and down to give her a visual answer. "…Too much blood has been shed since I came here."

With the first vial filled up, Fusei replaced it with a second vial to continue talking to him.

"If your blood checks out, I'd like to draw more from you to fill the blood reserves, sir," she told him, and retyped on her phone, "IF WHAT YOU SAY IS TRUE, THEN I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR SHINJI FOR A LONG TIME. I HAD TO MAKE SURE THAT IT WAS HIM THAT I WAS TRYING TO FIND."

"Why did…you want…doctor?" He asked her, his eyes widening at her face.

"My boyfriend wanted to be a doctor, but he never got to fulfill his dream…so I tried to do it for him. So I sort of fulfilled two out of four goals."

"What were…other two goals?" His voice was starting to sound a little better.

"To get married, which I can't because the love of my life died. And the other…I think is better if I didn't say anything about it."

On her phone, she typed, "FIND MY MISSING BABY, WHICH I'VE FINALLY FOUND."

"Maybe that's why…he likes you so much," he told her, unable to believe that he was sitting in front of the real deal.

"Thank you very much," she praised him, and removed the third vial tube of blood that she used to replace the second vial, finishing drawing blood from him. "These should be enough to run tests and clear you."

"Get away…while you still can," he told her. "A good person like yourself…doesn't deserve this. None of you deserve this."

She somehow knew he was referring to Shinji and herself, and that they should leave NERV as soon as they could. But first, she had to let Shinji know that she was here for him, that she was here for the child that had been taken from her.

"Who doesn't deserve what they earn?" She questioned, and left his cell.

To be continued…

A/N: And there you have it. I could have gone on with this chapter, but I couldn't think of a way to add to it. And now Fuyutsuki knows and the revelation is at hand. But first, an Angel has to get in the way of things.


	5. I want to tell you

Creation began on 03-11-17

Creation ended on 03-19-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

I want to tell you

Sometimes, Shinji didn't know whether to continue putting up with Asuka's negative treatment towards him or to give her a smack in the face and tell her to cease said treatment and just accept him as he was because there were worst ways to deal with this matter, most of which he didn't even want to think because, as much as he hated her attitude towards him, doing such would just echo everyone that said he was no different from his parents…and he was beginning to hate that reminder, as well.

"…And then, there's your low synchronization with my Unit-02," Asuka brought up while they were walking down the hall in NERV to the Eva cages for another round of sync tests after school got let out. "I'm letting you know, if my synchronization is affected because of you, I will kick you!"

"You can't let it go that I had no say in that compatibility test they made us go through?" He asked her, becoming very irritated by her unnecessary bad attitude over the test.

"No, because you were in my Eva," she claimed. "The fact that you were in it is an embarrassment to me and everything I stand for."

It was her pride that was most irritating to Shinji. He just wanted to forget that test among other things NERV-related, but this redhead just wanted to hold onto them like they were necessary to point out to him, and he was starting to lose his cool.

"Asuka," he started, but the redhead cut him off.

"What?" She went, not knowing that she was getting on his nerves. "What, Third, what?"

His right hand balled into a fist that he was slowly bringing up.

"Am I interrupting something that is unjustifiable, Ms. Soryu?" They both heard Fusei, as she appeared around a corner, looking irritated herself as she carried a small tablet in her hands. "No, no, I want to see where this goes, really. Here you are, one of the very few not chosen by a higher authority, but by a bunch of government suits and potentially-crooked politicians that could care less about your well-being, Ms. Soryu, and you want to get into a pissing match with this young man who seems to only want to knock your lights out because you refuse to let up with past events?"

Asuka wasn't about to take this from some newbie woman that came here a just a few days ago.

"I read your profile," Fusei continued. "You're of mixed heritage. Your mother was half Japanese and half German while your father was of an American background, your primary language is German, with secondary languages being Japanese and English. You're thirteen years old, having gone through one of those accelerated education programs that certain families put their children through only when they don't have the time to deal with them by themselves, obtaining a degree in computers, but your psychological profile shows issues with your personality and social skills."

"Oh, really?" Asuka questioned her.

"Yes. You suffer from a superiority complex with an equally-troublesome inferiority complex to go with a sense of narcissism. You feel that you're the only one that matters, that you don't make mistakes in anything you do, that those around you make mistakes that you feel you get in trouble for by your association, and you have to rectify the problem as best you can. You go to great lengths to be seen, heard and remembered by those around you for your achievements, even if they're only based around one thing. So…I have to ask you something that needs to be answered. What do you feel when you're inside the Eva? What do you feel?"

Shinji didn't expect to hear such a question being asked. It seemed to be a logical one, as well.

"What do I feel?" Asuka spoke. "I feel empowered. I feel like I'm on top of the world, that nobody can stop me from taking on the Angels without much assistance."

"Now, that's a terrible answer," Fusei told her. "That's not even a real answer. You dodged what the question was trying to get at."

"No, I didn't. I answered you."

"If I ask Shinji here the same question, his response would likely be very different from yours. Shinji? What do you feel when you're inside the Eva?"

Shinji looked at Fusei as he tried to find an appropriate way to answer her question.

"I feel pain," he started. "I feel fear, confusion. Every time the Eva gets damaged, there's the neural feedback, but that's only half the pain. There's difficulty in facing the Angels when you have to concern yourself with safety of the people that live in the city, that any move you make causes them pain, even when it's to try and keep them safe because nothing happens the way you wish they could. As much as I hear that Tokyo-3 is a fortress city that we're supposed to keep safe for the people against the Angels, I personally feel that it would be easier if the conflict between the Evas and Angels was elsewhere where there were no people around to endanger. If there were no people, there would be no fear of casualties. If there wasn't a city to fight in or around, there would be no fear of collateral damages from the battles. Every time I face an Angel, I have to live with the repercussions of each outcome, even when they're killed."

Fusei sighed and then nodded her head in the positive before looking back to Asuka.

"That's an answer, Ms. Soryu," she told the redhead. "Shinji answered something you refrained from answering. Now, I'll ask you again, but with simpler clarity, what do you feel when you're inside the Eva? If you had to face an Angel in the city on your own…and in the process, maybe you…unintentionally caused harm to some people, maybe even a small child, and they were either crippled, disfigured or even killed as a consequence…what would you feel?"

If she had asked Shinji, the boy would answer that he wouldn't want to pilot the Eva ever again. But with Asuka, it was anyone's guess as to how she would answer the question.

"What do I feel? What would I feel?" Asuka went. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

Both Shinji and Fusei were silently appalled by her response and the adult woman sighed heavily.

"You honestly feel nothing of the sort within the Eva?" She asked her.

"Even without the threat of the Angels, people die or suffer every day," Asuka told her. "It's just a fact of life that happens to be one of the most harshest ones."

"As true as that is, the fact that you answered you feel absolutely nothing when inside the Eva is a clear sign of your narcissistic attitude towards other people. You lack concern, even sympathy for others. Of course, I'm positive that protecting the rights of people's right to life wasn't part of your would-be job description when you were selected to pilot the Eva, it is expected of you to feel something for those that have to put their chances of seeing the next day of sunlight in your hands. A person that feels nothing for others…is no different from someone running over a dog or cat or small child that's on the street as your car passes by the neighborhood. Just something in your way to your next achievement for whatever it's worth. It's immoral…and inhumane."

Asuka then looked at Shinji and walked away from him and Fusei; she didn't need a migraine from either of them just because she didn't answer the lady that was both a computer expert and a licensed physician to her satisfaction on what she felt inside the Eva or should feel like the Third Child had, the pathetic boy that she felt was being treated with kid gloves just because he was able to sync with a defective Eva without any prior training.

Shinji, feeling a sense of relief now that Asuka had left them in the hall, no longer felt the need to ball up his fist, calmed down completely.

"How are you feeling today, Shinji?" Fusei asked him.

"I'm feeling fine, thank you very much," he answered her. "Yourself?"

"I've had a swell morning. Had to request several of the personnel to donate blood for emergencies that require transfusions. Then I had to donate blood myself. It's a little exhausting, but I'm hoping that it will be worth everything we're doing here. Honestly, I was looking for you right now because there was something I really wanted to talk to you about."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. It's, uh… Wow. I haven't imagined a day like this before. I keep looking forward to the reason I got here, not to fear the outcome. If I come off as intrusive or projecting myself on you, I apologize."

Shinji wasn't sure what she was trying to say to him.

"Remember when I said I was looking for something for a long time to give my life meaning?" She asked him. "I was only telling you half the truth because I wasn't sure if I should tell you the whole truth. It wasn't a thing I was looking for, you see. It was a person."

Before she could say any more, the alarms went off, indicating that a new Angel had appeared.

"Another Angel?" Shinji asked, realizing that he would have to get to the Eva soon.

 _Dammit,_ Fusei thought. "You should go get ready, Shinji."

He sighed and walked past her.

"Shinji!" She stopped him momentarily. "When you get back… I'll tell you everything I've been wanting to tell you."

He nodded in the positive; with their lunch schedules needing to be canceled due to their distractions of other obligations, neither had been able to see or speak with the other.

As he left to get into his plugsuit, he didn't realize how close he had been to knowing who he really was to this woman that spent his whole life looking for him.

-x-

Not one to let her curiosity go unanswered, Ritsuko, prior to the alarms going off to warn the personnel of the next Angel's arrival, had to look at Shinji's DNA again after looking at his blood type…and put the boy through the NERV DNA database to find a genetic match, if there were any around, since she couldn't help but believe that the chances of any blood relatives, maternal or paternal, being around NERV or Tokyo-3 were astronomical. Until she was proven wrong.

 _Impossible,_ she wanted to believe, but she couldn't deny the two types of searches she had the MAGI perform in order to see for herself. _And none of us saw this in front of us. If Ikari finds out about this, there's no telling what he'll do. But the boy's likely to find out…_ _unless the woman is unable to tell him._

On her computer screen, the results of a mitochondria DNA search matched Shinji Ikari to none other than Fusei Hitode, and the mitochondria match couldn't have been distant. There were too many comparisons that made Ritsuko assume otherwise.

 _There's no distant relation between the two,_ she realized. _She has to be the real deal._

Destroying her search before Commander Ikari could find out about what she did behind his back, the faux-blond got ready to deal with the Angel.

-x-

"…This Angel's been dropping multiple pieces of itself in brutal fashion," said Hyuga to the rest of the Central Dogma personnel present, showing holographic displays of the Angel that was in space above the Pacific Ocean. "It's been correcting its aim in order to hit its target."

"NERV HQ," went Shigeru. "Even if it misses, what's left of Tokyo-3 will be made into an extension of the ocean…and we'll be dead."

"You mean, this Angel's one, big bomb?" Shinji asked.

"I think that's exactly what he's saying," Fusei told him. "And the strategy for dealing with it is among the craziest I've ever heard with zero chance of success without some sort of miracle."

"Misato wants us to catch the Angel with our hands," went Asuka, embarrassed by the plan. "You do realize that the only thing likely to survive the explosion this Angel will set off is the Evas themselves."

"So, it's either we catch the Angel before it lands on us…or we all die," Shinji sighed.

"Yeah," Fusei agreed with him.

"Then, we'll have to make sure we catch it."

-x-

"…You do realize that this plan of yours is completely insane, right?" Ritsuko asked Misato as they were in the ladies' room.

"What choice do we have?" Misato asked her.

"All for your so-called revenge against the Angels?"

"Don't even go there."

"If what I'm thinking is even right after what I discovered half an hour ago, the possibility of your plan failing will have a dark impact on Shinji."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'll tell you if we survive this."

Ritsuko left the restroom, leaving Misato to wonder how the possibility of her plan failing would have a dark impact on Shinji.

-x-

Fusei could have left with the rest of the lower personnel when they vacated the Geo-Front, but she chose to stay. She wanted to be there for Shinji when he returned, to say what she needed to say to him as quickly as possible. Maybe she was kidding herself with the possibility of seeing him after the battle, that he would even listen to her afterwards or want anything to do with her, but a lifetime spent looking for him didn't change her feelings toward the boy.

"…You seem to like Shinji a lot," she heard Ms. Katsuragi behind her as she looked at the monitor displaying Unit-01.

"You think it's wrong of me?" She asked her.

"All I really know is that ever since he met you, Shinji's been rather… I want to say 'cheerful', but it doesn't do him any justice."

"I wouldn't mind it if he were cheerful, but with the way he grew up, it may take something far greater than just a kind face or a mere hug to break him from his cold shackles."

"Most people that know of him tend to think he's similar to his father."

"But is blood thicker than water between the two?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing."

Misato then looked to the monitor displaying the geographical location of where the Angel was likely to land and had positioned the three Evas at three spots to spread them out and increase their chances of success against the Angel.

"You don't believe in the Evas, do you?" She asked Fusei.

"No," she answered her.

"Then why come here of all places?"

Fusei sighed and answered, "I believe in Shinji…and want to believe in him further, regardless of what others think."

Misato found this woman to be the most unusual person she had ever seen since she got here. It was like she had a hidden agenda that she wasn't being straightforward about. But there was no feeling of wanting to take down NERV. No, there was something else entirely different with this woman, something the purple-haired woman wasn't seeing.

"The Angel has begun on its descent!" They heard Hyuga inform them, and the red light that represented the Angel slowly falling onto the city above them. "It's aiming for the center, closest to where Unit-01 is positioned!"

-x-

Shinji willed Unit-01 to run as fast as it could to the small hill where the Angel was falling. His orders were simple, if simple was the best word to even use at a time like this: Catch the Angel and destroy the core before it could reduce the city into an extension of the ocean. But all the while, he couldn't stop thinking a separate thought that was whatever it was Ms. Hitode wanted to tell him. All he really knew was that she was coming clean with her reason for being at NERV, that she was looking for someone, but this attack had prevented her from saying who it was she was looking for. And he just couldn't and wouldn't jump to conclusions on the who and why without the clarity of why.

 _What is it that you want to tell me, Ms. Hitode?_ He wondered, reaching the hill and spreading his AT-Field to intercept the Angel. "Aaurgh!"

SLAM! The Angel was far more massive than he had expected it to be, and felt like it weighed more than Misato's car!

"ETA for Units-00 and 02 is two minutes away," he heard Maya over the intercom.

"I don't think I have two minutes," he told her, feeling like Unit-01's right leg was about to break from the intense pressure caused by the Angel. "I seriously do not have two minutes!"

-x-

Fusei could see that Shinji didn't even have one minute, not unless the strain of the synchronization between himself and the Eva was reduced. She quickly typed in a new series of code that was sent to Unit-01 in order to lessen the pain the boy was feeling.

"Synchronization has lowered to forty-two percent," Maya informed Ritsuko.

"What did you do, Hitode?" Ritsuko asked Fusei.

"Reducing the synchronization improves his chances of holding on until help arrives," she revealed her act to her, and the holographic displays of the Evas and the city itself began to face out. _Please, pull through this, Shinji._

-x-

Unit-00 had arrived at Unit-01 before Unit-02 did, helping to push back up the Angel.

STAB! Unit-02 had finally arrived, its Prog. Knife in its hands, and stabbed the Angel in its core.

"Uuurgh!" They all heard the Angel react as its body became limp and fell on the Evas.

BOOM! It self-destructed and enveloped the city in a blinding light.

Fortunately, the explosion was contained by the AT-Fields of the Evas, leaving the city obscured by light for a few moments. When it ceased, the city was left unscathed…and the Evas were laying on the ground, minor singes on their armor…and Unit-01's right leg severed below the knee.

-x-

"What's the status of the pilots?" Misato asked Hyuga.

"They're in one piece," he answered her. "Ballsy move, reducing the synchronization of the Third Child, Hitode."

Fusei wiped her forehead sweat away and sighed.

"It depends on your definition of the term," she responded.

"Women with the balls to do what men can't," went Ritsuko.

"People that try to see alternatives of what's in front of them. Minimize the damage as much as possible. Whatever it takes to ensure the least amount of bloodshed."

"And if there's no alternative available?"

"There's always an alternative available. You just have to be open to the possibilities."

For some reason, Misato got the feeling that Fusei was vastly different from Ritsuko in more ways than one, particularly the woman's sense of morality and her work ethics. And her question about her belief in the Evas was an obvious one on her part; the woman had more faith in the people, not the weapons or was just more accepting of living people instead of man-made copies of the First Angel that caused Second Impact.

"You're an unusual woman, Ms. Hitode," Ritsuko expressed.

"I'm an enigma half the time," Fusei responded. "Until I choose not to be."

-x-

Shinji groaned as he force-ejected the Entry Plug from the Eva, expelling the LCL and filling his lungs with hot air that was at least clean.

"Aaah…" He hissed as he climbed out of the plug and set his right leg onto the ground, feeling like it was stiff as it was when it fell asleep. "Stupid Angel and stupid synchronization needs."

He fell to the ground and looked up at the sky.

"You idiot!" He heard Asuka shout at him. "You nearly blew the whole mission, Third!"

The redhead, rather than accepting the success of the mission against the Angel, was looking for an excuse to vent her frustration out on Shinji.

"Asuka, this is completely unnecessary," he told her as she stood over him.

"You hesitated for a total of three seconds! Three seconds between either total success or failure!"

"Asuka…"

"What were you thinking in that length of time?! I mean, what, were you thinking about that woman from earlier?!"

He looked up at her and answered, "Yes, I was thinking about her…and I was thinking about what you said to her regarding the Eva and what you feel inside it. It's disturbing and cruel, the way you answered her question. You claim to feel nothing when you pilot it, that you don't feel fear from possibly causing more harm as you face an Angel, and it's messed up. And you have some nerve to speak like that."

Asuka didn't like how he used what she had said earlier against her like that. Just because she gave her answer on such a trivial matter, she felt that he wasn't entitled to call her out or criticize her on said piece of triviality.

"I don't know right now just who's worse than the rest of you," she told him. "You for your stupid hesitation, the First for having a defective prototype Eva…or that Hitode woman that some people think is after Dr. Akagi's job."

"If you're trying to pin blame on the would-be incompetence of others around you, Asuka, you're wrong for trying when it is a team effort that aided in saving the city, people's homes and lives today. We made sure they have something to come back to later…if they choose to come back at all."

"Oh, they'll come back. What choice do they have?"

-x-

Three seconds. Just three seconds worth of inactivity from Unit-01 before it moved to intercept the Angel. And it seemed like Fusei was one of the few that wasn't bothered by Shinji's minor hesitation due to simply thinking.

"…Although it ended in success, the mission could've gone the other way," she heard Ms. Katsuragi utter to her and Dr. Akagi as they stepped into an elevator with Mr. Kaji to meet the children at the Eva cages. "Is he going brain-dead or something?"

"No offense, Ms. Katsuragi," Fusei uttered, wanting her opinion heard, "but you sound like Ms. Soryu right now. You both sound like Shinji intentionally hesitated before moving in."

"You sound like you're soft on him on purpose, Ms. Hitode," Kaji expressed his opinion to her.

Fusei, on the left side of the elevator, looked at the only man opposite of her in said elevator and said, "You don't believe in positive reinforcement, do you? Simply yelling at someone younger than yourself and pointing out their flaws and errors like they're the only thing they do isn't only detrimental to their personal development, it's just plain cruel."

"No offense to your opinions, Hitode, but I have to agree with what Shinji once suggested about you," went Ritsuko to her. "You sound like you should have gone and had kids. You sound like a mother rather than a computer specialist or medical physician."

"None taken. To each their own."

"Or maybe…you're one for real…and you haven't told anyone yet."

Misato looked at Ritsuko and said, "That's hard to believe, coming from a woman that replaces people comfort with the presence of cats."

"No, really, she is."

The elevator then stopped on their destination and all but Fusei stepped out of it; what the faux-blond said really struck a personal nerve…and she had a suspicion that she knew just as much as she had discovered in such a short time that took her longer to find out.

Ritsuko noticed this and stayed behind to talk to her.

"You know, at first, I believed you were after my position," she told Fusei in the hall. "But that's not the case at all with you, is it? You're not even here to suck up to Commander Ikari or Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki. You're here for the boy. He's the only reason a woman like you bothered to come to work at NERV at all, isn't he?"

"What are you talking about?" Fusei tried to feign ignorance to her accusation.

"You can't fool me any longer, Ms. Hitode. I know I was ordered to disregard a recent discovery based off a rumor that started shortly after the Fifth Angel incident, but curiosity has a way of getting the better of people when they can't let go of the desire for the truth, the reason, behind the what, how or why, and there were some things that are either just meant to be found out…or kept further from being found out. You and the Third Child are the only two at NERV…and the whole of Tokyo-3…with the same blood type…and his mitochondrial DNA is a perfect match to yours."

"I'm sorry, I still don't understand what you're talking about."

Ritsuko looked around them…and then closed the two-feet distance in between them.

"You and Shinji are related," she told her. "Admit it. You're not like his aunt or a cousin or some other distant relative. You're his mother."

Even though she didn't express any sign of reaction to this accusation, Fusei did feel that this woman was going to jeopardize what she was here for.

"What are you implying and why would you imply that?" She asked her.

"Commander Ikari would go to great lengths to keep the truth hidden," she informed her. "Normally, I wouldn't have been bothered by such a matter, but that revolved around the fact that it was believed his mother was dead and no longer involved in his life. Yet, his mother isn't dead…and wants to be involved in his life. If he were to ever find out that the Third Child knows the truth, Commander Ikari would make sure he'd never leave, even if he wanted to."

"So, hypothetically speaking, Commander Ikari would want Shinji on a tight leash if a possible relative were to show up and find out what happened to him over time?"

"Hypothetically speaking, you're right."

"But, hypothetically speaking, that's only if Shinji knows the truth. And he doesn't yet."

"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki realized this and was incarcerated for telling him only that his parents weren't his parents. If he were to discover that his real parents had somehow found out where he was and came back for him, things would become difficult for Commander Ikari."

"Which would require the truth to be hidden at any cost, even if it means lying to the boy or covering up a sudden disappearance, death or transfer."

Ritsuko got the feeling that Fusei had a Taser on her after Misato informed her that she had tased Kaji with one for trying to hit on her in an attempt to make the tactical officer jealous.

"If you want to tell him that his biological mother is here, I'd suggest you do it soon so that Commander Ikari can have no other alternative but to explain why he has no relation to the boy," Ritsuko defended her accusation to Fusei, stepping away from her.

Fusei didn't like this one bit, but had more or less promised that she would tell Shinji everything, and walked away.

-x-

Shinji was glad to be out of the Eva again after putting it back in the cage, but really wanted to wash off the LCL before meeting with Fusei. And he wanted to get as far away from Asuka, too, not wanting to engage in unnecessary conversation with her because her pride, her ego was getting irritating to him.

"Hey, Shinji," he heard Fusei on the umbilical bridge to his right. "I'm glad you're back."

"Thank you," he responded. "It's nice to see you here, too. Um, is it okay if I go wash up before talking about what you were trying to explain earlier?"

"Uh, yes, of course. Please, go wash up."

He slowly turned away, leaving the woman on the bridge.

Fusei turned to face the head and face of Unit-01, feeling an eerie sense of minor intimidation, and shuddered a little.

 _Get a grip, Fusei,_ she thought. _You have every right to let him know that you're here for him, no matter what everyone says. And he has a right to know that he was taken from you._

-x-

Just as Gendo was getting ready for his brief time over in the South Pole's lifeless ocean to retrieve a relic necessary for the Instrumentality Project, he was stopped by Ritsuko, who seemed to have something to tell him.

"What is it?" He asked, on a tight schedule right now.

"It was no coincidence," she uttered. "It was an emotional urge, an instinctual drive. Fourteen years worth of patience that has clearly paid off."

"Would you care to elaborate?"

"Blood types weren't the only match between the two. She's his mother. His real mother. She couldn't deny it when I confronted her about it, even if she didn't say anything about the truth, except with hypotheticals. Now, the question becomes… Why did she come to see him after fourteen years…if she didn't just come to see him?"

Gendo didn't say anything regarding this new discovery, only that he would be gone for a few days. And then he walked away.

Ritsuko wasn't sure if he was even affected by this revelation, but it was clear to her that something was off with what she thought was a truth about the pilots and the Evas. If it wasn't the lack of a mother/child bond that was required, then it was something else entirely, something that perverts such a bond between a mother and her child.

-x-

With a better stench than that of LCL, Shinji stepped out of the men's locker room and into the hallway. He was looking forward to finally hearing from Ms. Hitode now that there were no longer any distractions in the way.

"Hey," he heard her say to him upon finding her around a corner in the hall.

"Hey," he responded.

"How do you feel?"

"I feel fine now."

"That's…that's good to hear from you. Really, it is."

"Thank you."

There was something about the way she seemed interested in talking to him, like there was a reason to her questions about his background that wasn't revolving around his status as an Eva pilot or facing the Angels. He couldn't understand why this seemed so.

"Well…you said you were looking for someone?" He asked her.

"Yeah," she answered him. "For a long time. Maybe we should sit down. I really want for you to not feel shocked as much."

There was a bench beside them and they sat down.

"I was looking for you, Shinji," she explained.

"Why me?" He asked.

"After Mr. Fuyutsuki showed up that day and told you that your parents weren't really your parents…and before I even showed up here at all…I was looking for you for fourteen years."

"Fourteen years? But I was just a… And you must have been at least… What are you saying, exactly, Ms. Hitode?"

"Your blood type doesn't match Mr. Ikari's. In fact, your blood type doesn't match anyone here."

"But…my blood type is A-Positive."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Yes. I mean, it says so on my medical file."

"Except…I checked your blood type myself, Shinji, and it's actually AB-Negative, the same as mine."

"Meaning what, Ms. Hitode?"

Fusei slowly brought up her hands, but then placed them on her lap.

"I was thirteen when I got pregnant, Shinji," she revealed to him. "I was fourteen when Second Impact occurred. Tokyo was devastated and a lot of people got hurt, including my boyfriend, the love of my life. Before he died, I had a boy. It was difficult because of my left leg being broken due to fallen debris. It was three days later, upon waking up from a dead sleep, I saw something that was painful to experience, let alone watch. I saw two shadows departing with my baby…and I haven't been able to find him ever since…until today."

Shinji wanted to believe that this woman had become delusional and was trying to make a convincing story to sell him, but Ms. Hitode just seemed too much of an honest person to make up a false belief.

"What makes you think I'm who you're looking for?" He questioned.

"You remember that night at the ramen stand?" She reminded him. "It was after you left. I took your chopsticks and ran the DNA on the saliva you left on them. A friend of mine ran it against mine…and he called me with the results, which he wouldn't lie to me about. Do you know what mitochondrial DNA is?"

"No."

"That's the DNA one only gets from their family's maternal side, passable only by the mother. We both have the same mitochondrial DNA, Shinji."

Time seemed to pause for a brief moment around Shinji, permitting him only a moment to wrap his head around all this information that Ms. Hitode was sharing with him. Mitochondrial DNA, something that you only receive from your mother's side of the family, the sub-commander telling him that the Ikaris weren't his relatives, Ms. Hitode being a teenager by the time she started her entrance to motherhood, Second Impact, her boyfriend being dead, and the truth that was being revealed. All he knew before this was that he had no memory of what his mother, a woman he had thought was his, looked like because a man he thought was his father had disposed of every picture, and now he was beside a woman that claimed to be the one that breathed life into him, that carried him under her heart.

"I don't really expect you to accept all of this at once," Fusei told him, looking away from his face. "I just want you to know that I have spent your whole life trying to find you, to be a part of your life, whatever size that part may be. Because…I grew up knowing that a mother never forgets about her child…and should never not be there in case they need her."

Except Shinji was trying to take this all in at once, trying to understand what was truth and what he had thought was the truth. And why he felt such a positive feeling whenever he was around this woman. He knew he shouldn't have tried to, to simply take it a day at a time, but he found it hard right now.

"Ikari-Kun," they heard Rei Ayanami a few feet away from them, still in her plugsuit. "Doctor Akagi requests your presence."

Shinji sighed and got up. He was going to ask Ms. Hitode something that might have explained much to him, but the fact that he was reminded how Dr. Akagi wasn't very patient with most people would have meant that he had to go see her immediately. As he turned to face Ms. Hitode, who was getting up herself, and couldn't help but give her a smile and a wave before walking away.

-x-

"…Since your synchronization had to be reduced in order to keep the Angel at bay," Ritsuko explained the reason for this unscheduled meeting with Shinji, "I need to make sure you're not experiencing any side-effects of what happened in the Eva."

Sitting in a chair beside a tray of medical instruments, the Third Child sighed and expressed, "Actually, it was only because of the reduction in the synchronization that I didn't have a splitting headache or lose sensation in my hands. It was probably Ms. Hitode that had a hand in the reduction, right?"

"That's right," went Misato, who was in the room with them. "She might've actually saved you from neural overload by reducing the synchronization."

Ritsuko took an ophthalmoscope and shined a light in his left eye.

"Any double vision?" She asked him.

"No, ma'am," he answered.

"Seeing things that aren't there?"

"No."

"What about hearing voices others can't?"

"Nope."

"Anything recent that has happened to you lately? Anything at all?"

"Just…speaking with Ms. Hitode."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

Misato then uttered, "Ritsuko here has told me something that she felt would have a dark impact on you if the mission to take out the Angel didn't go well that involved the new lady in your life."

"Huh?" Shinji reacted.

"Whatever Ms. Hitode might've told you, you'd do best to believe her," said Ritsuko to him.

"What are you talking about?" He asked her.

"Heh… She tried the exact same thing when I tried confronting her about it."

"I really don't know what you're talking about."

"Didn't she say anything to you that might've explained what the sub-commander told you?" Misato asked him.

"Even if she had, I'm sure it would've been viewed as trying to take advantage of someone who didn't know what was true," Shinji responded, trying to be logical and honest. "Like someone saying they spent a long time looking for people and then claiming they were looking for you."

"Shinji, we know what's really going on with you two," Misato clarified to him. "If she told you anything about heritage or genetic relations, it pretty much reveals all."

But Shinji wasn't convinced just yet that they did know what was going on with them.

"Try and humor me, then," he tried. "What is it that you think is going on between us?"

"I ran her DNA to compare against yours, and the results were conclusive for a mitochondrial match," explained Ritsuko to him. "Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the…"

"The mother's side of the family," Shinji cut her off, sighing. "She had explained that to me earlier."

"That confirmed that she's…that she's your… She's your biological mother, Shinji." Misato expressed.

So they knew, as well, and it was both startling and unbelievable that he had been told…and how hard it was to process this.

"But…I was always told my mother was dead," he explained. "I mean, I always thought she was dead because I don't have a picture of her or anything…and my… That man wouldn't tell me anything about her… So I always…"

"It's more than likely you were just led to believe in that, Shinji," Misato cut him off. "Rits here ran your DNA to find any relation to the Ikaris, and there wasn't any. Whatever the truth behind this all, Fusei's your mother…and…you should let her know that you believe her. We'll deal with any other matters later on."

"I…I… What should I say to her? She's spent my whole life looking for me…and we don't even know each other very well."

"Well, just talking to each other is a good way to start," went Ritsuko, giving him a clean bill of health.

Shinji got up and left out the room afterward, none the clear-headed because of the revelation he had gotten from three women today. He was having a difficult time trying to deal with what he learned of to be truth and breaking much of what he had been led to believe was the truth for a long time. A man he had believed…and hated knowing most of the time to be his father wasn't his father, a dead woman that wasn't his mother, and a woman he had only met a few days ago revealing herself to be his mother. He wasn't sure if he wanted to believe the new truth or think this all as nothing more than a weird dream he was unable to wake up from.

-x-

"…Still hard to believe," said Misato to Ritsuko, looking at a small monitor that displayed Shinji and Fusei's pictures and DNA. "She's his mother. It's insane."

"Yes, but DNA doesn't lie. People can lie about DNA, even fabricate it if they want to lie, but this is truth here. And because of it, it brings into question why there's no indication that the Third Child was adopted by the Ikaris or obtained through some sort of surrogacy attempt."

"Yeah, that's an interesting thing to know about. If there's nothing to indicate either of those, then what was Shinji doing with people he has no relation to?"

"There's only one other possibility that could explain why. He was kidnapped and passed off as Commander Ikari's son."

"Kidnapping? But that's a major crime, punishable by life in prison or the death sentence. Why risk those extremes by kidnapping a child?"

"The only people that could tell you…are the ones that committed the crime."

To be continued…

A/N: What do you think now? Surprised? Of course, this wasn't going to be happy just yet, but now Shinji's aware of the relationship between himself and Fusei and will likely know who his real father was and what happened to him.


	6. RDAT, ADBT

Creation began on 03-19-17

Creation ended on 03-25-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Rei doesn't accept this, Asuka doesn't believe this

She didn't hear much of it, but Rei Ayanami heard enough of the conversation between Shinji Ikari and Fusei Hitode to know that she was bothered by the older woman's would-be attachment to the Third Child. That's why she intervened before anything more could be shared between them by informing the boy that Dr. Akagi wanted to see him. She didn't know anything about mitochondrial DNA or the Third Child's background, but Rei knew that a bond between the pilot and the Eva was necessary to get it to move, which now jeopardized the reliability of the Third Child if the bond between him and the Eva wasn't a true bond. Whoever this woman really was, Rei needed to make sure that she didn't endanger the primary objective that was NERV's purpose to defeat the Angels.

"…Ayanami?" She heard Shinji's voice and was reminded that they were in the hallway sometime after the boy had returned from his sojourn meeting with Dr. Akagi.

"Yes?" She asked him.

"Have you seen… Have you seen Ms. Hitode?" He asked her.

"I have not seen her since you left to see Dr. Akagi," she responded, although it was nothing more than a lie to the boy…and her first one ever; she really didn't want him talking to Ms. Hitode as much as possible. "Why are you looking for her?"

"I, uh… I just need to talk to her again, that's all," he responded; he wasn't sure what he could say to Ayanami about what he had recently found out about.

How could he just go and say that he found out about Ms. Hitode being his real mother and having absolutely no relation to who he had been led to believe was his father? Or that she had spent his whole life trying to find him since she last saw him, three days after his birth? How could he explain any of this to her? Or even Asuka, who would probably be indifferent about it towards him just because of the disapproval of her response regarding the Eva.

"I'll probably find her in Central Dogma," he suggested, and then walked away.

If he had bothered to look back at the albino, he'd seen her hands balled into fists.

 _Commander Ikari is not going to like this,_ she thought.

-x-

Fusei had a difficult time concentrating on the sketch of Shinji she had yet to finish that she started on the day she met him.

"How goes your sketch of the Third Child, Ms. Fusei?" Maya asked the woman, taking her eyes off her romance novel.

"Same as the day before…and the day before the day before," she answered her.

"You seem to like the boy a lot."

"It's not like the type of romance you would read about in comic books or see on the Internet."

"Oh, you mean those genres shown in adult anime."

"It's not like that at all."

"Care to enlighten me on what it is?"

"I'd rather not. Some misinterpretations are better left un-interpreted."

"Please, if you're not a predator, then you're clearly something else. Maybe he was right about you, saying you should be the type of woman who should have kids."

 _Except I do,_ she thought. "What of you, Ms. Ibuki? Do you ever think of having any of your own one day?"

"Not really, no. Plus, it is as you said before. At a time like this, with the Angels, it's a potential death sentence because you don't know what could happen if you tried."

"Um, Ms. Hitode?" They both heard Shinji say, turning to face him. "Um…are you free to talk?"

Fusei closed up her sketch pad and typed in a few more codes on her console before turning her chair around.

"Yeah, Shinji," she responded to him. "What do want to talk about?"

"It's, uh…kinda personal."

"Okay…"

-x-

"…Where is that idiot?" Asuka wondered as she looked around NERV for Shinji. "It don't take that long to have a chitchat with some woman."

She was about to turn a corner when she heard a male voice speak up.

"…They told me that they knew," she recognized the voice as Shinji's. "Doctor Akagi ran both our blood and found comparisons between us. So…what you told me earlier was all true. But… I always thought they were my parents…only to know that they're not. So…how do we start?"

"A reintroduction would be good," said a female voice, Dr. Hitode's. "But with more honesty on my part."

"Okay. Hello, my name is Shinji. Nice to meet you."

"Hello, Shinji. My name is Fusei Hitode…and…you might've heard that we're related."

"Yes, I have. In what way?"

"You're my son, Shinji, which makes me your mother. I'm probably not what you expected."

"Actually, I shouldn't be so concerned about appearances…so long as I have a picture to recall people by. The people I lived with before I came here, they didn't have any pictures of anyone laying around."

"Now, that's awful. What kind of people don't have pictures of relatives?"

"Apparently, those I lived with."

"Well, I don't have any of you except from when you were a day old. I keep a few copies of it to remind me that finding you was what kept me from giving up and wondering whether or not my baby was alright. Every other picture is of you as you are from your school profile. Here it is."

Asuka stayed silent, unsure if this was some kind of game these two were playing. Yet, it seemed convincing in the way words were thrown around. She found it unlikely that the new employee of NERV was the Third Child's mother, not when she read in his file that his mother was dead; if she read any pilot's profile, she'd likely find others with deceased mothers.

"That's me?" Shinji's voice asked, presumably being shown an old picture of himself (or somebody) as a baby.

"Yeah, that's you, Shinji."

Taking a chance, Asuka poked her head around the corner and saw Shinji and Dr. Hitode. The boy was looking at a picture in his hands and then looked up at the adult woman.

"I look so tiny," he said to her.

"You were about the size of a basketball," she explained to him, chuckling. "Your father, my boyfriend, was also no bigger than a basketball when he was a newborn."

Asuka found it hard to believe that Shinji was a bastard child because of his affiliation with the Ikari family, but then again, she really didn't know anything about this boy. Yet, if this woman wasn't playing with him, then it was a likelihood that he was such a child, same as her.

"What was he like?" Shinji asked her. "What was he like before he died?"

"He was two years older than I am, quiet but friendly, perceptive and devoted, someone you could count on to be the good guy. He wasn't tough or brutish, cared for politics or wanted to be valedictorian or anything, but he was no pushover or somebody looking to take charge over anyone. And he enjoyed talking about how one's day was, no matter how good or awful it was. It didn't matter if you were at the top of your game…or in bed with the flu. He wanted to be a doctor, to help people in need."

"Like you are right now? I mean, with the addition of being being into computers, that is."

"Yeah. He was going to be the doctor in the relationship while I specialized in computers. But then, he passed away, so I tried to fulfill his goal for him."

"I believe you did a good job of fulfilling his dream alongside your dream."

"Thank you, Shinji."

Asuka frowned and pulled her head back behind the corner. If this was a game they were playing with each other, it seemed that the Third Child was playing it very convincingly. It was as though he truly believed this woman, as if he believed everything she said to him. And what bothered her most was how he seemed more…expressive, like he could say what he always wanted to say without a put-down.

 _I am gonna chew him a new one later,_ she thought, walking away.

-x-

"…How are you doing, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki?" Misato asked the aged man in his cell, seeing him laying on his cot.

"Better after my visit from the new doctor," he responded, sounding better now that the drugs had worn out in his body. "How may I be of service to you, Captain Katsuragi?"

"It turns out you were right about the Ikaris not being the boy's relatives," she told him.

"You do realize that anything said in here is likely to be monitored and recorded," he warned.

"At this point, it's not going to matter what's said and monitored. Shinji knows the truth about his parents. He's talking with his mother, learning a bit more about his roots or whatever she's telling him. The only thing we've yet to understand is how he ended up with the Ikaris."

"My best guess is that he was kidnapped," he told her. "What I don't understand is why they did it to begin with."

"Well, it couldn't have been about money; the Hitodes are a middle-class family. Though, they were upper-middle before Second Impact put them in the lower-middle status due to the devastation caused to the economy and population. When you exclude Shinji, the family consists of just Fusei, an older sister and their mother. Second Impact took the lives of the girls' father and grandmother."

"If it was not about money, then it was more than likely about something personal, something a little better than money."

"Ikari knows why…or at the very least had a hand in the act."

"He won't talk if questioned."

"He'll talk to the Committee. He won't have a choice."

-x-

Dinner was very quiet at Misato's apartment. Until Asuka decided to speak up towards Shinji about earlier.

"You've been rather cheerful since talking to the new lady, Shinji," she told him.

"And that's a problem for you?" Shinji asked her; there was still a lot to talk about with his mother, but for now, it was better if not everyone knew the truth of their relation just yet.

"Well, of course, it's a problem. You're too friendly with someone you just met."

"I was friendly to you when we were formally introduced."

"That's different. We're both teens, not an older person."

"What about Misato? She's an older person."

"Whom we've known for far longer than the one you talk with."

Misato then realized that Asuka didn't know about Fusei being Shinji's mother.

"Asuka, he has every right to talk to Ms. Hitode," she told her. "There's a lot that was found out that you don't know. It's somewhat personal and difficult to explain."

"Then explain it to me why he has every right to talk to a woman that hasn't even been here a month and already seems to have an impact?"

"Asuka, she's… Fusei Hitode's actually Shinji's mother. She's his biological mother. We thought that Mrs. Ikari was Shinji's mother, but that was only a falsehood that we were led to believe."

Asuka was unwavering in her unwillingness to accept this as truth, though.

"How can you be so sure of this?" She asked her. "What proof do you have?"

"DNA, Asuka," Misato explained. "Fusei more than likely ran Shinji's like Ritsuko did and discovered that he has no blood relation to the Ikaris. We ran the DNA against Fusei's…and it was found that there was a mitochondrial match to Shinji. Or rather, Shinji's mitochondrial DNA matched Fusei's."

"Mitochondrial DNA? That's…that's only passed on by the mother. That's…that's impossible."

"No, it's impossible that nobody picked up on it before."

"So…what, he's an adopted wuss, then?"

"Nobody ever told me I was adopted," said Shinji to her, resenting being called an adopted wuss when there was no proof of this. "And how can I be adopted…if my mother and father never gave me up to begin with?"

"Are you sure about this? Anyone can lie."

"Fusei's not the lying type," Misato expressed. "Maybe she's told a few half-truths, but she's not lying to anyone. She has been quiet, though. I can probably guess what made her the silent type."

"And what made her the silent type, Misato?" Shinji asked her.

"The fear of not being able to find you, worrying every waking moment for the last fourteen years, wondering if you were okay…or even alive. Anyone can go mad a little bit if they didn't know, but she's as sane as anyone else I've seen is."

"I keep thinking I would go crazy in the Eva."

"That's you," Asuka told him, stating her opinion regarding the Eva. "You can't possibly believe any of this about Ms. Hitode."

"Except she explains a lot of things that we once thought was true that never was true," said Misato to her. "Her very relation to Shinji would even explain why Commander Ikari is so cold towards him."

But Asuka was still unwavering. She didn't want to believe this at all. It just couldn't be possible for the Third Child's mother was some…some stranger that just shows up like some act of Gott for him. It just felt so…so unfair.

-x-

Without a doubt, Rei Ayanami was in a similar state of disbelief that Asuka Langley Soryu was in. Though, she had more impulse control than the redhead currently did, merely standing in front of her window and looking out at the night sky. It was simply not possible for any pilot's mother to be alive to be eligible to pilot the Eva; deceased mothers were a necessity for piloting the Eva. And yet, the Third Child's mother was…very much alive and the boy was piloting an Eva…which shouldn't have been possible.

She saw one cloud that was, as eerie as it could have been, shaped like an Evangelion looking down at the world below.

 _Ikari-Kun will not keep away from her,_ she thought, suspecting that this unexpected relationship between the boy and the woman would hinder his reliability to NERV. _Commander Ikari will not tolerate this at all._

-x-

"…So, he's there?" A woman's voice uttered over the phone to Fusei in her apartment.

"Yes, and I've told him the truth once it was confirmed that he was mine," she responded to the woman. "It was…really good to finally tell him and reach out to him."

"Does he know about us? I mean, our mother and father and I? His father?"

"Not fully, but I'm telling him everything about our family."

"You two be careful in that city…and you be careful. It's not just Shinji you should be concerned about. If what I heard about that Gendo guy is true, then he is not one to be anywhere near unless you're packing."

Fusei then looked over to a small case on her dresser with a lock on it. She shuddered at the thought of using her father's gun over the Tasers she had. It wasn't because of the Hippocratic Oath she took as a doctor to first do no harm, but because after losing her father, grandfather and boyfriend and recovering from a broken leg the depression of her son being kidnapped, she, a woman that started motherhood the second she had her baby, couldn't bring herself to even think about killing another person. Unless it was unintentionally and in self-defense, she couldn't and wouldn't cross that line. She owed to her boyfriend and Shinji not to.

"You know I can't cross that line yet, Shinko-Kinomi," she told her sister. "It would be easier to just go after him through legal channels. Now that we know who had taken Shinji, we can charge them with kidnapping, just like what Mother suggested. There's no statute of limitations on kidnapping, which can include whatever happened to Shinji during the time he was taken. But we shouldn't go down that route unless as an absolute last resort."

"Softie. Still, the path of least resistance is the path that causes the least amount of suffering. If you see that monster, make sure you give him a piece of a Hitode's mind."

"Don't have to tell me twice."

When she hung up, she picked up the case containing her father's gun and stored it in the closet…and came out with a different case that contained a different gun. It wasn't like a Glock or Desert Eagle firearm, even though it had a combination of metallic alloys mixed with plastics, but it was mainly for defensive purposes. It was a next-generation Taser gun that actually fired bullet-like darts at people (A/N: Think the Taser gun they use in _APB_ ), not just regular bullets. A few friends of hers from before Second Impact that survived the devastation had gotten it for her as a birthday gift two years ago after she had been an attempted victim of a mugging and tasered the fool hard in the neck and crotch before taking his gun and reporting him to the police.

"Gotta make sure all the rounds in here are just for tasering," she told herself, setting it down at her kitchen table and getting to work.

-x-

"…Asuka, can we talk?" Shinji asked the redhead, standing outside her room's sliding door, waiting for a response.

The door slid open and the redhead looked like she was very disinterested in anything about him.

"What do you want, Third?" She asked him.

"You don't think Ms. Hitode's my mother at all, do you?" He questioned her.

"Of course I don't think she's your mother. I think she's playing you, and you don't see that."

"Why do you think this? Why is hard for you to believe it when you're told that she's my mother? I had a small time believing it myself, but then Misato and Dr. Akagi revealed the same truth Ms. Hitode told me, and how could I not believe them? The only thing awful about it was what happened fourteen years ago."

"And you honestly believe this? From the bottom of your conscious? You believe this woman's your mother?"

"Yes, Asuka, I do. Why do you think I shouldn't?"

"Because it's wrong."

"How is it wrong?"

"It's wrong because it's so convenient that your mom's very much alive while mine's very much dead! That's why it's wrong!" She then slid the door closed in front of his face; she didn't want to talk about it any further tonight. _Verdammt, Shinji. It's so convenient for you. You find out your mother is alive and some woman you thought was your mother was not your mother. How you get such luck? Verdammt! You stupid idiot!_

She hated him right now. She hated him…and it wasn't even his fault. There was no way he could have known that his birth mother was alive, there was no way he could have known that she had spent fourteen years looking for him, or that she would even have any guarantee of finding him alive or that he would believe her to be his mother. And she knew she couldn't blame him for any of this, no matter how much she hated him…or envied him.

-x-

The next morning, school was pretty silent. It was like things were on some sort of autopilot because everyone was just trying to fall back into their daily routines, which didn't seem hard for the elderly teacher that went on and on about the cover story on Second Impact. One train of thought was that because yesterday's potential outcome could've resulted in a city and large patch of land being eradicated, most people that didn't know how close they came to losing things they took for granted just took inventory on what mattered to them.

"…Are you alright, Asuka?" Hikari asked the redhead, seeing her during lunchtime on the school rooftop. "You've been rather quiet, which is unlike you."

Overlooking the city away from the school, Asuka turned to face the pig-tailed girl and sighed.

"Tell me something, Hikari," she uttered to her, "Do you believe in people not knowing who their parents are?"

"What? What do you mean by that?" Hikari asked her.

"I mean…is it possible for people… I read this old article about a man that had no idea he was adopted for twenty-three years, that his mother was made to give him up when she was thirteen by her father…and then tried to find him…for years. Is it possible for people…to not know who their parents really are…for years?" She tried to make a convincing lie to her; how could she tell her that Shinji found out that his real mother had spent his whole life trying to find him?

"Well, yeah," Hikari answered her. "People can go years, decades, not knowing who their parents really are. Some that get adopted often don't know or even care for the reason or reasons to the why."

"But…what if they weren't adopted to begin with…and they still didn't know that the people they grew up around weren't their relatives? What if…they were just taken from their blood relatives before they were even old enough to remember anything?"

"Then that's kidnapping. You kidnap someone's child, especially when they're young, and nobody does anything to stop them and they spend their lives never knowing, you have more guilt, more shame on your conscience that you will never be freed from. And the child you took will be scarred if they ever find out the truth. People they had a connection to destroyed, relationships never explored or developed if the parents they needed to know about were dead or gone. Even in the darkest days of suffering, anyone is able to find some peace in their sleep. But for anyone that chooses to inflict some form of suffering onto others, be it murder or some other form of humiliation, with absolutely no regard for their feelings, the guilt that swells up within them will not permit them any peace when they seek to rest in the afterlife. Not ever. You intentionally do harm to someone else, you will never know peace when you die or sleep. Your guilty conscience will never permit it, and there will no place for you to lay down your head."

If this had been some sort of religious saying, Asuka would have put her foot down on it and disbelieve it to the core of her being. But her friend had struck heavy nerves with the explanation for her fabrication and illuminated some thoughts. Even though she hated Shinji strictly for being an Eva pilot, he just found out that his mother who died years ago was not his blood mother (and may as well as not been a surrogate or adopted mother if there was no proof) and a man he hated for leaving him years ago was not his father, and it was infuriating and awful because he was a big victim of acts beyond him that were committed against him and his relatives. And she couldn't hate him for finding out about the truth, one piece or layer at a time, even if she viewed one piece of it as being unfair in her eyes.

"Thanks for clarifying that, Hikari," she told her, feeling some sense of clarity for herself.

When school got let out later that day, Asuka caught up with Shinji as he walked towards NERV HQ, and noticed that the First Child was already further up ahead.

"Hey, Shinji," she called out to him by his name.

He turned to face her.

"Yes?" He responded.

"Are you…going to talk to Dr. Hitode again?" She asked him.

"Yeah, why?"

"Might I speak with her myself?"

"If that's what you want to do, I'm not going to stop you."

"It's personal, you know."

"That's your business."

"At least tell me one thing. Do you…think you'll recover from the revelation of your past?"

"Revelation?"

"You just found out about your real mother and she's telling you about your roots that contradict what you thought was true. I mean, if that man you thought was your father finds out, he might have a problem with you spending time with her, what, if anything, are you going to say to him? What will you do?"

"If I have to, I will confront him with this discovery…and demand an explanation for why."

"Oh… Okay."

Shinji then resumed walking towards NERV HQ.

"About last night," he stopped again at the sound of her voice. "I am sorry."

It was the first time she had ever apologized to him for anything she said or did.

"You're forgiven," he told her.

-x-

The salvaging of the Spear of Longinus was a success. And with the destruction of the Eighth Angel, that left only five Angels to deal with before the Human Instrumentality Project could be implemented.

 _I think mankind can afford a little season of relief,_ thought Gendo as he saw the last helicopter release the tow cables that held the Spear in place before being placed aboard the carrier needed to transport it.

The Antarctic was a virtual wasteland. No trace of life at all, not even a tiny microbe. But Gendo didn't let this bother him; places like this meant nothing to him.

-x-

"…Your guardian actually has a penguin?" Fusei asked Shinji later that day as they walked down the hall to the testing chambers.

"Yeah," he answered her. "It's weird, I admit it, but I've seen weird things ever since I got here."

"The first weird thing I saw was that creature you kids stopped from destroying the city the other day. Which reminds me, Shinji, bravo on what you did for everyone."

"Thank you. So…what are you doing right now? Here at NERV, I mean?"

"Helping in an autopilot system called the Dummy System, but I have my doubts that it will be of any use. From a basic understanding, it's supposed to work as a replacement to the use of actual pilots for the Eva. Basically, a false pilot system in case something were to happen to any of you that either incapacitates or compromises your ability to use the Eva."

"But…if something like that were to work out for NERV, then they wouldn't need us, anymore, right? I mean, if they wanted something better than a person to pilot the Eva, they wouldn't have to concern themselves with us."

"Maybe, Shinji, but an autopilot's nothing but a machine following basic or advanced programming. Even if the Dummy System does work out, there's no guarantee that it will do right by the people."

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is…machines can't appreciate things they're made to do like people can. They can't place or appreciate value on what can or should take precedent in anything relevant to a situation. You build a robot to aid in building cars, that's all it's gonna do. It can't feel concern that a car is faulty or is gonna cause a traffic accident."

"Like what you asked Asuka the other day? What do we feel? You're concerned…because an autopilot system doesn't feel anything."

"Yeah. If it can't discern right from wrong, only following some form of instruction, then something can happen that causes problems. It's like a movie that was made over two years ago, which was a remake of a film years before Second Impact called _Robocop_ , which included themes like control between human and machine, the line between deviation and following orders. You replace police with robots, robots can only assess the level of a given threat and act accordingly, with no trace of emotion like police do, which hinder their performance. But if something goes wrong, you can't blame the robot that was only following its programming and can't be held accountable for its actions."

"I think I saw that movie with Kensuke and Toji a week ago," Shinji realized. "Yeah, it had that guy that was injured and turned into a cyborg that was slowly becoming a robot before he retook control of himself. Will you be doing something to make it so that the autopilot system takes into consideration the possibility of error?"

Fusei lowered and leaned in on Shinji and said, "That's what I'm going to try because I have my doubts that it will work out right."

Shinji chuckled and smiled at her. He really felt elated around her, telling her about himself and hearing about her life. It wasn't just the sense of elation he felt, he wanted to feel that, when this matter with the Angels and the Evas was all said and done, he could just…walk away from it all and build up his relationship with his mother.

"Do you think this war with the Angels will ever end?" He asked her.

"It's gotta end sooner or later," she said, not really answering him. "I want to believe that it will end soon. I couldn't give up on finding you, Shinji, and I wasn't going to let a city that might do well if it wasn't attacked so much stop me from looking for you here. And though your father's not around, I want for you to meet everyone still around. Your aunt, my elder sister, your grandmother, your father's brother, all of us."

"I…I want that, too."

As they continued to walk towards the testing chambers, they were silently followed by Rei, who looked irritable by the sight of this woman interacting with Shinji. It was…unpleasant and could not be tolerated. This…relationship…had to stop and come undone.

To be continued…

A/N: Again, if this seems like Asuka bashing, I apologize. The truth of the matter is, Asuka never thinks to question most things that Shinji will. And I had to make Fusei address her personality the way she did that explains her behavior. But the question I had her ask Hikari helped her understand what the situation is with Shinji and put her on the path to dealing with it better. We can't all be exorcised of our demons. Also, I'm putting up a new poll to confront the next chapter's influence, so be on the lookout for it later.


	7. Maternal Morality outweighs Eternity

Creation began on 03-25-17

Creation ended on 04-18-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Maternal Mortality outweighs Eternity

"…That's odd," went Maya, monitoring the synchronization between the pilots and the Evas. "The Third Child's current sync ratio is lower than yesterday's."

"Is there a glitch in the system?" Misato asked Ritsuko.

"No, everything's operating normally," the faux-blond responded to her. _He's just not able to connect with who he was led to believe was his mother for a long time as well as he used to._

Fusei typed in some codes and hoped they would help her son. They didn't have the intended effect, but Shinji's synchronization went up by a few points.

"Well, that's a little better," Misato expressed. "How are you doing in there, Shinji?"

"Fine," he answered her.

"No headaches or anything?" Fusei asked her son.

"Nope."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

Misato then looked at Fusei, who turned to face her.

"Yes?" Fusei questioned.

"You two look alike," Misato told her.

"If you say so," she responded, turning away to resume monitoring her son.

-x-

As Gendo returned to his office the next day, he sent for Rei to meet him.

"Tell me," he told her as she stood in front of his desk, "has anything happened that I should know about?"

"Pilot Ikari has become…attached to the new employee, Dr. Fusei Hitode…who seems to be attached to him," Rei explained.

"Elaborate."

"Doctor Hitode has…made a claim to being his mother…and he seems to believe her."

Gendo didn't like this. It just made a memory of an old act committed repeat itself in greater clarity. A large room full of the dead, dying and injured masses of Tokyo, either residents or tourists, the scent of blood and decay in the air mixed with sterile solutions, a bandaged, young man falling out of his cot, and absolutely little to no security. It seemed like the perfect opportunity had presented itself in front of them.

"You're dismissed," he told Rei.

"Yes, sir," she responded and turned away.

-x-

"…And Genshi-teki and I dated at least seven times," said Fusei to Shinji as they ate lunch together in the cafeteria, trying out her son's cooking. "Mmm… I think if I ate three more of these, I'd have to call you a connoisseur deity, Shinji. Your dumplings are delicious."

"Thank you," Shinji responded. "It was only seven times?"

"Well, seven is considered to be a magical number, and they were spread over eight months. Seven official dates, to be exact. Any other time we were together, it was either a lunch date or just hanging out. I was twelve when we were introduced to each other by his younger brother, one of my best friends from school."

"How were you able to go out on dates during that whole time? I always thought dates occurred during the night and that there were curfews."

"We lived in a different time before Second Impact…and in a neighborhood in Tokyo where everyone knew each other enough to keep an eye out on others. Genshi-teki always had me home before ten. Usually around eight-thirty, three times at nine-thirty."

"All I ever hear about Tokyo was that it was rendered a wasteland in the aftermath of Second Impact by my school teacher, who just repeats the awful piece of history, over and over again."

"Your teacher must be at least senile in his old age to do that. Tokyo was the biggest city in history. Not just in Japan, but the whole world. Bigger than its successor cities, Tokyos-2 and 3. Oh, the days where you could see miles and miles of buildings lit up at night, the winters where the sky was white and the ground was just as white and made soft by a blanket of snow…or just the mundane hours where everyone is performing the Shibuya Scramble or trying to catch the bullet trains to or from somewhere. Even just looking around the city from Tokyo Tower could make the plainest of days a great one."

"Now, that right there, what you just told me, is many times greater than what my teacher says. Thank you."

As they were conversing, Misato, Asuka, Ritsuko and Kaji were watching them from a distance in the room.

"It's hard to imagine him being able to talk to her like that," said Kaji, who didn't know that the two were related. "I don't think he's ever spoken with anyone like that before."

"Better her than anyone else, right?" Misato asked him, actually happy for Shinji to be building his relationship with his mother after a lifetime apart from her.

"What's going to happen when the commander gets wind of this and decides their relationship is getting in the way?" Asuka questioned; even though she still envied Shinji for having his mother be involved in his life, she didn't want him to lose the one, good thing that just got returned to him. "Or worse than that?"

"Oh, it's not like he could just order them to not talk to each other," said Ritsuko, taking a bite out of her chicken sandwich. "And she's not after my position, as some were led to assume. It would be moot for him to try anything towards the two. He already has other things that he has to answer to the Committee…and he can't ignore them."

"What are you talking about?" Kaji asked her.

"It's better if you don't know," Misato told him. "You'd just run your mouth about it."

"Hey, now, that's not true. I can keep secrets."

"Yeah, bad secrets."

Kaji looked at Fusei, who then turned away from Shinji to look at him, and he quickly turned back to face Misato.

"Okay, it's probably nothing," Fusei said to Shinji as she turned back to face him, "but I need to ask this about Mr. Kaji. Is he trying to hit on me?"

Shinji turned to face Kaji and the others, then back to his mother and responded, "I think he's just trying to make Misato jealous."

"Were these two a couple or something?"

"Yeah."

"If he's trying to get back together with her, why doesn't he just say it to her face and let her decide whether or not to rekindle their relationship?"

"I stay out of their business. You like him?"

"No, I tasered him when he touched me. I threatened to do it again if he tried to hit on me. Genshi-teki was my first and my last. I would never forsake his memory for another man."

"That's devotion."

"Yep. Say, is there anyone in your life that is…fancying you a little?"

Shinji thought about it for a bit, but found that hard to explain.

"Not in those words," he expressed. "It's hard to explain because I never thought of anyone like that before."

Fusei nodded in understanding and took a bite out of another dumpling.

"What's your type of romantic interest?" She asked him.

"I guess I'd prefer someone old-fashioned. Someone that likes me for me."

"Not bad. Not a bad preference at all, Shinji."

Unbeknownst to the pair, Rei, who sat a minor distance from everyone else, watched Shinji and Fusei with cold eyes. Her salad bowl long since eaten, the vegetarian watched the Third Child smile and chuckle in front of Dr. Fusei. It was…sickening for some reason, seeing them together.

-x-

Gendo looked at a copy of the medical report Ritsuko had made of Fusei Hitode and the Third Child, frowning at the DNA test comparisons that proved beyond any doubt that the woman was the boy's mother…and shattering his long-held assumption that the woman had been dead for years. And the worst part of this discovery was that if the boy knew the truth, then keeping him in check was going to be difficult. Still, he had no other alternatives just yet until a successful deployment of the Dummy System was attempted.

He picked up his phone and uttered, "Bring in the Third Child to my office, immediately."

This was a matter that needed to be resolved quickly. Hopefully, ordering the boy to cease his interactions with the woman would put him back in line with his scenario.

Within five minutes, Shinji, who was supposed to be on his way back to Misato's, entered Gendo's office.

"You wanted to see me?" He asked him, slightly irritated by some things about the man.

"Yes," Gendo answered him. "It has been brought to my attention that you've been associating with Dr. Hitode for some time."

"Since she arrived a few days ago."

"You're to cease your conversations with her."

"What? Why should I stop talking to her? Give me one good reason."

"You do not know who she is or what her motives are."

"That's a lame reason to tell me to stop. I like talking to her."

"For all we know, she could be poisoning you against NERV. She could very well be affecting your recent synchronization results with the Eva, hindering you and making you a liability."

"That's not true. She hasn't done anything to me since I've met her."

"You don't know that."

"I know only what I've been told, and she's a trustworthy woman. I could tell her anything and not get looked down by her."

"You listen to me, pilot. I'm the one in charge here, and I order you to cease your association with this woman, immediately."

"You may be in charge here, but you can't order me to stop spending my time with someone I choose to spend my time with, no matter what you say or do."

"You will listen to your father."

Shinji sighed and decided to say, "And who would that be, exactly? Who is my father, really? Is it the guy that has never said anything kind to me since I was little…or is it a guy that I found out has been dead since I was a baby? Lately, I've been inclined to believe in the latter, just as I have been inclined to believe in looking deeper into my past and rethinking a lot of what I had to put up with for years."

"What are you talking about?" Gendo demanded.

"I think you already know what I'm talking about, sir. I think you've known for a long time. Heh-heh…for a while now, I was trying to figure out why it seemed as though you hated me for most periods, and I could never understand why. Couldn't understand why for many things, like why you chose me over countless other kids that were more qualified to pilot a robot that wasn't even guaranteed to work for long? Why you send for me, out of the blue, after so many years of neglect? Why you won't even say something as simple as a kind word…or why you took me from Ms. Hitode to begin with?"

Gendo then looked down at the report again before looking back at Shinji.

"What has she told you?" He demanded again.

"Only what gives what Mr. Fuyutsuki told me a lot of credibility," the boy expressed cryptically. "He said you weren't my father…and Dr. Akagi and Misato backed up what Ms. Hitode revealed to me. It turns out my blood type is AB-Negative, not A-Positive, as I've been led to believe. I didn't understand why I felt so at ease around her until she told me why she was here to begin with. It had nothing to do with the Eva, with her career, with the belief that she was trying to take Dr. Akagi's job, absolutely nothing to do with NERV. She was looking for me. She was looking…for her son that had been taken from her."

"And you really believe that she thinks you're her son? She could be delusional."

"There's no delusion. Just a woman that has spent fourteen years trying to find me, to be part of my life…and I want for her to be part of my life."

Shinji then turned to leave the office.

"Stop right there!" Gendo shouted. "I'm ordering you to cease your association with her!"

Shinji stopped and turned around.

"No!" He yelled at him. "I don't have to listen to that order…and I don't have to listen to you! We're not related, so you have no say in who I can see, who I can talk to or how to think! You stay away! Just stay away!"

Shinji then left the room, feeling relieved to have gotten that off his chest.

Gendo was furious! Not only did the boy know the truth, but knowing jeopardized his position as Unit-01's pilot, and there was no doubt that Dr. Akagi had indeed confirmed everything to the boy about his real mother.

-x-

She knew something had happened the moment he came into the trauma ward looking for her. Fusei could see the stress on Shinji's face when he appeared.

"Are you alright?" She asked him as he saw a nearby chair and sat down in it.

"He wanted to see me," he explained, referring to Gendo. "He wants me to stop associating with you. I told him 'no'. He thinks he can tell me what to do, but I don't want to listen to his order."

She got up from where she sat to restock a cabinet with gauze and bandages, and held onto him.

"We'll get around this predicament, Shinji," she told him; of course, she knew that she had to expect some sort of repercussions that came with finding her son, but right now, this came first. "Do you want to talk about it some more?"

"He thinks you're manipulating me, poisoning me, causing my synchronization with the Eva to drop a bit, but I told him that was impossible. I mean, he never talks about his wife when I thought she was you, and then I find out the woman I was supposed to know about was looking for me for years…and he wants me to cease contact with my mother. How do you fight something like that? How do you go against someone that orders you to stop spending time with a woman that's your mother and wants to be involved in your life?"

Fusei sat beside him on the left and said, "Anata ga taeru koto ga dekireba, anata wa taeshinobudeshou ("If you can endure, you will endure"), Shinji. If he knows he has no say in anything you decide, then he has to accept that he has no say in what you do."

Then, she removed something from around her neck. It was a small series of red thread woven together to form a chain, holding an circular emblem with a bird inside it.

"Are you familiar with the myths about the Phoenix?" She asked him.

"No," he answered.

"It's this bird wreathed in flames that has been known by many, different names throughout history. The Vermillion Bird, Suzaku, even just the Phoenix. It symbolizes fire, passion, life, renewal, etc. Eternity bound by life, living one life after another, but never always the same life…because it's never the same in every reincarnation. Your father gave me this charm on our fifth date and I suggested the use of red thread, based on the belief of the Red String of Fate that binds two people together. For years, this has been one of a few things that has kept me together. Maybe if you have it, it'll be like having your father and I with you."

"Thank you," Shinji accepted and placed it around his neck. "I hope you don't get in trouble because of me."

"Even if I did, Shinji, having found you would be worth the trouble. I love you very much."

Shinji hugged her; he hadn't been able to address her as his mother directly yet, but he was slowly getting to that point.

-x-

"…You may disagree with this revelation, but it's due to her recent involvement that the Dummy System is nearing completion, sir," Ritsuko informed Gendo in his office, showing the chart with the unfinished segments of code that were being used to build up the software for the Dummy System. "Half these codes wouldn't even be in our possession if not for Ms. Hitode."

"Yet, her presence endangers the Third Child's synchronization with Unit-01," he reminded her, disappointed that she didn't disregard the blood type matches and even revealed to the boy his relation to the woman that threatened to undo a part of his scenario. "He continues to connect with her, his synchronization lowers, which will jeopardize our future against the Angels."

Ritsuko couldn't deny this potential danger, which is why she would've suggested relieving the boy of his piloting duties (also, because of his lack of an actual tie to the spirit within Unit-01, which likely had something to do with its short rampage during the compatibility test), but she doubt that Gendo would cut the boy loose, even though it was bound to come out soon that he had no right to exploit him if there was no blood or even a document of adoption between them.

"Sir, you once admitted that you don't even think about the Third Child outside of his usefulness, so why the concern for him associating with his mother?"

"She's not his mother," Gendo retorted.

"I kept rechecking the DNA, and it confirms more than words can say…or rather, what words can't say."

"Irrelevant."

Ritsuko could've said more, but it was pointless with Gendo; no matter how many times what he heard that was the truth, he wouldn't admit to it.

"I suppose talking to her or bribing her to keep away from him is out of the question, as well?" She suggested to him, though she wasn't serious on either suggestion; maybe it was because Fusei seemed to be a completely different representation of who her own mother could've been to her, but Ritsuko didn't have any ill will towards her.

And someone that clearly knew codes that could make one of the MAGI supercomputers work more efficiently than the other two was too invaluable to lose because of a Machiavellian man's unwillingness to admit a truth that not even she knew well enough; all she knew that was the truth was a legally-dead woman married to a man of many disrespects had a child that wasn't even theirs in the biological sense while the real mother was alive and kicking…and trying to be involved in her son's life.

-x-

"…So what happened with you being asked to go to Commander Ikari's office?" Misato asked Shinji during dinner.

"He wanted me to stop talking to Dr. Hitode," he sighed.

"Why'd he want you to do that for?" Asuka asked.

"Because he's a cold man."

"He doesn't think she's your mother, does he?" Misato asked him.

"Whether he does or doesn't really means nothing to him," Shinji responded. "I told him 'no'."

"Right on," Asuka praised him. "Say, when you gonna invite her over for dinner?"

"I haven't asked her yet. I haven't even thought of asking her that."

"You should as soon as you can," Misato encouraged him. "Crazy as it seems right now, you should spend every moment you can with her."

-x-

"This is the finished prototype," said Fusei to Ritsuko, who brought Gendo into the large room where the red-painted Entry Plug hung suspended in the air. _Gendo Ikari? He's one of the people that took Shinji from us, Genshi-teki. Ugh._

Gendo noticed Fusei and felt only contempt at her for being here.

"Why is she here, Dr. Akagi?" He asked Ritsuko.

"I asked her to complete the Dummy Plug," she answered him. "All of Rei's synchronization data has been transferred into the plug, however, digitization of the human soul is impossible. In the end, it's nothing more than a machine designed to simulate the conditions of a pilot."

"The Dummy Plug sends out a simulated synchronization signal," said Gendo. "The Eva thinks that it has a pilot inside it and syncs with that artificial connection."

"The system still needs to pass the test of actually working with the Eva before it can be considered a successful trial run," Fusei informed them. "Unfortunately, it can't function with Unit-00 because of the delicacy of its own design."

Put quite simply, Unit-00 was incompatible with the Dummy System because it was a primitive Evangelion, prone to errors and not as effective as its successor models.

"What of Units-01 and 02?" Gendo questioned; it was his intention that the Dummy System work with Unit-01.

"It'll work with them," Fusei answered before Ritsuko could. "They're more advanced than the original design."

"But what Dr. Hitode says about it working successfully is true," Ritsuko told him. "We've yet to get it working with the Eva."

"It won't matter, so long as the Eva moves," Gendo responded and walked away.

But Fusei wasn't as confident about that. If she was going to entrust an autopilot system she felt was meant to completely eliminate the reliability of the actual pilots, it had to work flawlessly. And she had no faith in it ever doing that, which was why she made sure to install a certain series of code that she hoped would at least make the Eva…morally responsible for certain situations.

-x-

Shinji couldn't stop looking at the phoenix charm his mother lent to him. Even as he lay in his futon, the way it glistened in the limited light in the still darkness was a comfort to him. And knowing his late father gave it to his mother on their fifth date was also a comfort, knowing a bit more about these two people that were his parents, shedding some light on a past he didn't know about. It almost felt like the bird could come to life in his room and fly right out the window, leaving a trail of feathers or flame.

He then put it under his pillow and fell to sleep, trying to think positive about the next day.

-x-

"…For the Unit-03 test, we'll be using the Fourth Child," Ritsuko informed Misato the following day in Central Dogma.

"The Fourth Child?" She asked her. "The Marduk Institute finally found the Fourth Child?"

"Yeah, just this morning."

"But I didn't receive a report from them."

"You should get it within the hour."

"Rits…are you hiding something from me?"

"No."

On a computer screen, an image file popped up, revealing a young man.

"You're kidding," Misato uttered, recognizing the individual. "Him?"

-x-

"…You're in a good mood lately, Shinji," said Kensuke to him as they walked into the classroom. "What, you and Soryu set a date or something?"

"No, nothing like that," he responded as he sat down at his desk. "A few days ago, I… Something unbelievable happened, and it changed a bit of things."

"Sounds like something NERV-related."

"No, not related to NERV at all. It's…complicated."

"How is it complicated?"

How could Shinji explain to the otaku that he was slowly developing his relationship with his long-lost mother? Or that his father wasn't really his father? While it might have seemed easy to simply say it and wait for his response, Shinji found it hard to share these facts with others a little. Even if there was a chance of Kensuke or Toji understanding him, Shinji just couldn't explain it all just yet.

"Attention, students," a female voice uttered over the speakers in the building. "Will Kensuke Aida report to the Principal's office? That is all."

"What did you do this time, Kensuke?" Toji asked him as the otaku got up.

"All I did was skip school to videotape a Navy vessel," he confessed, and left the room. "That can't be what they want me at the Principal's office for."

When he left, Toji looked at Shinji and expressed, "Kensuke's right. You do seem to be in a good mood, Shinji. Whatever happened to you lately must be good."

"It's nothing NERV-related, I swear," Shinji defended.

"Well, it must be better than what he told me last night about the Eva they're shipping over here from the USA after the incident in Nevada."

"What incident?"

"Something about an explosion of some sort that took out the entire NERV branch there. You didn't know about it?"

"No."

"Well…if you didn't know, then it was probably not for you to know about it. I didn't even want to know. Kensuke just told me because he can't keep his mouth shut."

Shinji thought about asking his mother (his heart still jumped whenever he thought of Fusei Hitode as his mother), but then figured that there was no guarantee of her knowing if she joined NERV a few days ago (and was likely to have problems with Commander Ikari).

"What's with Rei?" Toji asked, and Shinji turned towards the windows at the albino girl, who wasn't looking out them like she usually did.

Instead, she was looking at him.

"That's complicated," Shinji explained. "Not easy to speak of."

"She seems angry about something."

"It's not even something to be angry about… Mostly."

"You know something?"

-x-

"…You don't like who they picked as the Fourth Child, either, Ms. Katsuragi?" Fusei asked Misato in one of the NERV breakrooms.

"So, you heard, too?" Misato asked her as she lay on one of the cots present.

"How could I not hear about it? This boy, however… He's a friend of Shinji's, isn't he?"

"Um, yes."

"Will he be informed by anyone?"

"To be honest, I don't know if even he will tell Shinji. I've looked at his file and from what was stated, the very prospect of piloting an Eva was…desirable, despite the inherent risks and dangers involved."

"Desirable? Wanting to explore undersea ruins, that's desirable. Taking a girl out on a date to a nice restaurant, that's also desirable. Even just wanting to go on vacation somewhere different than where you've been is desirable. But this? This isn't desirable. This is something we should be trying to use the Dummy System on. Wasn't it meant to ensure that nobody else had to go through with what these three teens already do? I don't like this. Something's off."

"This is the second time I believe you about something as serious as this."

Fusei sighed and sat on one of the sofas present.

"If Shinji doesn't know and I don't have an opportunity to inform him, could you let him know?" She asked Misato. "I don't know about his social life outside of his obligation to NERV, but you're the one that's in charge of making sure he and the young ladies survive these encounters. So you gotta make sure that this young man isn't harmed, as well."

"But didn't they need your help in developing the Dummy System?"

"Yes, but do you really put your faith in something that hasn't been successfully tested yet? I may have graduated at the top of my class when it came to computers and coding, but there are no guarantees…just as there are no absolutes with the Evas."

"Hey, ladies!" They both looked at the entrance to the room and saw Kaji step inside. "Need any help with anything?"

Fusei sighed and reached into her knapsack, pulling out her Taser that she used on him once before, making no hint to him that she was willing to use it on him again if he tried something.

"Unless there's reliable information, go bother someone else, Kaji," went Misato to him.

Since Fusei was on the right side of the room, Kaji moved to the left side, away from both women and to another cot.

"It depends on the type of information you're looking for," he told them.

"Why another young man was selected for the Eva program," Fusei explained, "and why one for whom the prospect of piloting one was desired? What boy in this day and age would want to risk their future better spent trying to be something worth living for…just to operate a skyscraper-sized, man-made behemoth?"

"You can't possibly think I know something like that?" Kaji defended, but he got the feeling that Fusei wasn't easy to mislead.

"And you dated this man before?" Fusei asked Misato.

"The biggest blemish of my life," the commanding officer confessed.

"I couldn't have been worse than anyone you dated, Ms. Hitode," Kaji stated, which earned a glare from the woman. "Or not."

"Let's keep these personal tidbits of ourselves to ourselves, please," she suggested, though the suggestion of anybody she had dated in her past did spark a memory from before Second Impact.

" _Have you decided on a name, Fusei-Chan?"_ Genshi-teki had asked her one night in his bedroom, holding her as they lay in his bed, his left hand caressing her slim abdomen.

" _Shinji if it's a boy, after my great-grandfather,"_ she had told him, and then she got on top of him, _"and Kannazuki if it's a girl, after your grandmother."_

" _Shinji. Kannazuki. Good names."_

"But for the record," she uttered to Kaji, "the love of my life was the only man I ever dated. After he died, I stayed single. I believe in the Red String of Fate concept."

"Not many people have an understanding of the concept," he responded.

"If love is as true as it is pure, people that were meant to be together, then nothing, not a force in existence, be it one of the kami or one of mortality, can keep them separated. Those that believe in such a belief, anyway."

Kaji sighed and uttered, "Try looking at Code Seven-Zero-Seven."

Fusei looked over at Misato and asked, "Are you familiar with that code?"

"That's the code location…for this city's junior high school," she explained, confused herself.

-x-

Shinji pondered whether or not to call his mother after finding out from Kensuke the reason he was summoned to the principal's office. He was uncomfortable with the mere idea of anyone else he knew piloting the Eva just to face the Angels. Even if his friend was so proud that he had been selected by NERV, he just had an awful feeling about what could happen.

 _She might know,_ he considered, dialing her number and waiting for her to pick up.

"Hello, this is Fusei Hitode," he heard her say.

"Hey, it's Shinji."

"Hey, Shinji, how are you?"

"My day in school was so-so. Um…the reason I'm calling is that… I found out from two of my classmates that there was an incident in Nevada of the United States where an Eva and NERV branch were in some kind of an explosion…and one of them was picked to pilot the Eva being sent over here. I was wondering if you knew about this?"

"Just recently today, Shinji. If you didn't know and Ms. Katsuragi didn't inform you, I was going to tell you. I personally find this to be wrong when there are already three of you and we're working on the autopilot system, making the need for a new child pilot unnecessary."

"I worry that this may have something to do with my declining synchronization scores."

"I doubt that, Shinji. I checked your scores, and they haven't declined too much. But…even if it were the case, this is part of the reason the development of the autopilot system was ordered. If it works out properly, without any flaws, you three won't have to pilot the Evas as much as you do right now. You could…you could spend more of your time being teens and thinking about what you want to do with your future."

"Thank you. If you see Misato, could you tell her I asked that she be careful with him?"

"No worries, Shinji. Be safe."

"Yes, ma'am."

He hung up and felt a little better.

-x-

Gendo could've terminated the call between the woman and the Third Child and block each other's future calls, but he wanted to hear what was going on, what Ms. Hitode said to the Third Child when he called her. And it was irritating how much the boy confided in her or how the woman spoke of a potential future where none of the pilots would have to deal with the Evas as much if the Dummy System made a breakthrough. And then, there was the concern for the new pilot, something he could care less about. To him, the pilots were just assets, an expendable resource…and the one that was the most expendable refused to fall in line.

"You two look alike," he heard Major Katsuragi say to Dr. Hitode in a video recording of one of the sync tests, referring to her and the Third Child having a resemblance to each other.

"If you say so," the other woman responded, as if trying to feign ignorance.

If it weren't for the fact that Dr. Akagi accepted this woman's aid and NERV's personnel had been shortened after the Fifth Angel, Gendo would've fired Fusei on the spot just for her connection to the Third Child. And it was only a matter of time before everyone knew the truth.

-x-

"…How'd that otaku get picked to be a pilot?" Asuka asked Shinji, as though he were in the loop on the discovery, whilst they and Rei were on their way to NERV.

"I called Ms. Hitode, but she only found out recently today," Shinji relayed to her. "Misato probably knows more on why."

"Do you honestly expect her to tell us why?"

"Since when has she lied about anything?"

"People can lie."

And of course, it was always something about that was a heavy hitter for Shinji, the fact that people could lie. Lie about many things, including themselves. It reminded him of a cartoon he had read about on the Internet from the States that was pretty popular and that there was an episode from its second season that featured a small segment relating to truths and lies. And it was starting to affect him to a degree whenever he wrote down or typed in his name.

Although he was grateful to know Fusei and as much about his long-lost relatives as possible, the fact that he grew up around the Ikari name was hard to get over because he kept having to erase Hitode whenever he wrote it down when he meant to write Ikari. As much as he wanted to use his biological mother's family's name, he had to put up with the falsehood he grew up believing for the time being.

"What's bothering you?" Asuka decided to ask him.

"Huh? Oh, nothing," he responded to her.

"Honestly, Shinji, I think your mother is better at hiding her emotions than you are. As much as I find it bothersome, I spoke with Hikari, who gave me an explanation to a question I had, so I have to give you the benefit of the doubt for your lack of insight."

"My lack of insight?"

As they continued down an escalator, the redhead explained, "You didn't know who your parents were, you didn't know that the commander wasn't really your father, or that a dead woman you thought was your mother wasn't really. You were harmed by a lifetime of lies and you're just learning about the truth. The people that lied to you will undoubtably be unable to sleep, knowing what they've done because they have to have a guilty conscience. And even when there's a chance for you to have a future with this Dr. Hitode, you're still a victim of some people you were with…and you can't change that."

Shinji realized that she was right about that.

"It'd probably be easier if there was such a thing as time travel," he suggested, only half-serious. "Then, there'd be like a reset to what went wrong in one's life."

"You spend too much time with that otaku," Asuka told him.

Rei, a good distance away, mildly frowned at the Third Child's belief of the Hitode woman. The more he talked about it, the more the Second Child talked about it, the more it disgusted her to hear about it for some reason. She couldn't believe that the new employee was the boy's relative when Commander Ikari's dead wife was.

-x-

Fusei didn't like what she and Ms. Katsuragi had discovered in the least. The code that Mr. Kaji suggested wasn't just the location of a school in the city, but the same school her son went to, and every single one of his classmates was a pilot candidate for the Eva program! This meant that the Marduk Institute was not only a false front for people to hear about, it was an excuse to exploit other children like her son by NERV itself. It also meant that the Aida boy's selection was no coincidence; there were no coincidences at all within NERV, only the inevitabilities from unexpected choices made behind the backs of others.

"Miss Hitode?" Misato asked her, but the woman seemed absent-minded or just too focused on what was found out right now; she guessed that this discovery put a considerable number of thoughts in her mind. "Fusei Hitode?"

Fusei broke out of her thoughts and looked at Misato.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Katsuragi," she apologized to her. "You were saying?"

"Are you feeling alright?"

"I haven't been alright in years. This is just another type of 'awful' in a series of 'awfuls' ever since that day fifteen years ago. How did nobody pick up on this? This isn't just something that happened recently. No wonder they wanted an autopilot system so badly; remove the human element from the equation, and replace it with something you think is more efficient because it doesn't have emotions, no matter what happens."

"I reckon you're going to tell Shinji about this?" She asked her; she couldn't hold it against her if she did, for this was a woman that needed to keep her child informed about everything that went on here because she likely made a conscience-based decision not to keep him in the dark, no matter what.

"I won't lie to him," she responded to her. "I can't lie to him. He asked for his friend to be kept safe…and I don't want to hurt him by not doing my job, which is to do just that."

"Your job as a doctor or your job as a computer expert?"

"All of the above, Ms. Katsuragi, all of the above."

And Misato suspected that when Fusei said that, she really meant her responsibilities as a parent, which included her professions being done to help people like her son.

"The Eva being brought in from the States arrives tomorrow and the NERV testing base at Matsushiro will be used to run the activation test the day after," she told her.

"Matsushiro? Why not just do the test here?" Fusei questioned. "I've looked at the layout of that base, and it's not properly equipped to handle an Eva test, let alone an Eva. It's basically just a makeshift lab miles away from the city. It would be easier to do the test here."

"I agree with you, but the order for the test came from the commander."

"What's your take on this Gendo Ikari?"

"Before you came along? Honestly, it was hard to ever imagine he and Shinji ever being related. The guy's colder than a freezer. Never a kind word or anything to him. Now, it makes perfect sense to why. You?"

"Beyond the job, I want nothing to do with him myself. I'm personally outraged by the kind of person he has been to Shinji for most of his life. I want to save my son from the pit of darkness he's in, no matter what position in his life I fill."

"I can't speak for him, but I'm sure that Shinji's spirits have been lifted by a substantial degree since he met you and learned the truth of his ties. I've never seen him so happy to be able to speak to at least one of his parents."

"It'll still be a while…if not a long time…before we're as close as I had wanted us to be after he was born. Really close."

-x-

Kensuke Aida wasn't seen at school the next day.

"You think he'll be alright, Shinji?" Toji asked.

"I wish I knew for sure," he responded, noticing that he had a bento with him, something he normally didn't have every day. "Where'd you get that, Toji?"

"This? Um, Hikari made it for me."

"The Class Rep.? Since when did you start addressing her by her name?"

Toji then turned away from Shinji, trying to find a reasonable excuse to use.

"Um, that would be telling," he said instead, which Shinji accepted.

"Toji, are you… Are you and she… You two hanging out or something?"

"Again, that would be telling."

Shinji decided to accept what Toji was avoiding to say. If he couldn't explain it just yet, then it was no different from himself not yet talking about his mother.

-x-

"…Okay, Mr. Aida," went Fusei to the young boy sitting on the stool, holding a wooden tongue depressor in her left hand. "Say, 'aah'."

"Aah," Kensuke responded, actually impressed that NERV had another beautiful woman like Misato around.

Fusei noticed his eyes and the way they looked at her; this was typical behavior of teenage boys due to their hormones and how their brains responded to stimuli when in the presence of adult women they saw as being attractive. She decided to beat around the bush a little with him as she removed the depressor from his tongue.

"So, you're a classmate of Shinji's, aren't you?" She asked him, tossing into a bio-hazard bin for later incineration.

"Huh? Shinji Ikari? Why, yes, ma'am. Yes, I am." He answered her.

"Tell me, what kind of person is he outside of NERV?"

"What can I say about him? He's kind of timid, doesn't seem to know how fortunate he is to live with a beautiful woman like Ms. Misato, and he gets to pilot the Eva. He's sort of like a celebrity…only he doesn't revel in his success at all."

"Any hobbies?"

"None that he's shared with me."

She then checked his vision and hearing, which were normal with the only minor exception being his nearsightedness.

"Tell me, do you believe piloting the Eva is…healthy for you?" She tried a trick question, testing his mental and emotional faculties.

"Healthy for me?" He repeated. "Honestly, no, but I was inside it once when I met Shinji, and after that, I wanted to get in it again."

"Sometimes, the first time is…somewhat traumatic. Was there a sense of fear, of pandemonium while inside the Eva when it was faced with an Angel?"

"Yes, ma'am, but doesn't that come with the job of piloting the Eva? It's fight or die."

"True, but the point of this brand of questioning is to understand you better. Emotionally, not intellectually. There's a need for psychological stability, but it's okay to express your real feelings in the matter. And because the Eva links to your nervous system, it's a two-way street between the Eva and the child inside it. Whatever it receives that's registered as an injury is also experienced by the pilot when synced at a high enough degree. If it receives a broken leg, it will feel like your own leg has been broken. When it suffers from some form of internal damage, you will feel the same way. Demonstrate fear, your synchronization falters. The same with anger. Also, there is a need for moral stability while piloting the Eva, which brings me to this question that you must answer honestly, Mr. Aida. What would you feel while piloting the Eva? How would you feel, knowing that you have a responsibility to ensure the protection and survival of everyone within the city and around the world, that you had to be perceptive of your surroundings and consider the possibility of making a mistake that you will have to live with until the end of your days?"

"How would I feel? The possibility of a mistake? Please, elaborate."

"Suppose you, albeit unintentionally, caused collateral damage, even the death of a small child and their parents, what would you feel? How would you react? Just answer honestly."

Kensuke thought about it, never really anticipating that line of questioning from anyone. All he knew was that when he was summoned to the principal's office, the woman there came to him with the offer to become an Evangelion pilot. It was all he really wanted to do, never really thinking about anything beyond that. There was no need to think beyond that.

But now, this woman was asking him. She wanted his honesty. He had to answer truthfully. Lying would get him nowhere.

"I guess…I would feel saddened," he responded to her.

"Why so?" She asked him, making sure she took notes on this conversation.

"If I found out that something like that happened, that I was responsible in some way… Because I ended those lives I was trying to save…and I couldn't save them. There would be guilt…and shame. I wouldn't be able to walk away from the repercussions, probably never sleep peacefully for the rest of my life."

"Are you certain of this? All I'm asking for is your honesty, nothing more."

Kensuke breathed in and out again before answering.

"Yes, ma'am."

Fusei nodded and set her pen down.

"Okay, Mr. Aida, I think I have enough information to set up the rest of your personnel data for future use. Your plugsuit fitting will begin as soon as you leave out to your next appointment. Thank you for your time."

"Yes, ma'am. You're welcome."

As he got up to leave the room, Fusei stopped him a moment longer.

"Just one more thing, Mr. Aida," she went, handing him a piece of paper. "Wearing glasses in the Entry Plug is a safety hazard due to unpredictable impacts. This is your prescription for waterproof contact lenses to correct your nearsightedness while inside the Entry Plug. If that doesn't help, we'll try corrective surgery."

"Um, yes, ma'am. Thank you."

Then, he was gone, leaving Fusei to ponder her next step. While her initial evaluation of the boy was that he clearly had a minor case of delusions of grandeur, his typical behavior was average, not troubled by most of the trauma of his past. But her judgment of him inside an Eva was that if he were in the face of adversity, he would suffer from not being able to see beyond the situation and act accordingly, only the situation and never past it unless he tried real hard. Put quite simply, in her mind, his role as a pilot would be more hurtful than helpful…and the need for a stable pilot was necessary.

 _Still, he's Shinji's friend, and I have to make sure he's kept out of harm's way,_ she thought, knowing she needed to make sure that nothing bad happened to the boy, but needing to think about a strategy that would be flawless.

-x-

"…So, I should be back within a day," went Misato to Shinji as she stepped out of the apartment. "You and Asuka behave yourselves, alright?"

"You don't have to tell me twice," he responded. "Just make sure that Kensuke doesn't get hurt out there."

"It's only an activation test… But still, I'll make sure he's fine. Your mother cleared him medically, so there shouldn't be much of a problem."

But Shinji had that look on his face that meant that just because of a medical clearing, it didn't change the fact that he was worried about his friend being an Eva pilot. If something terrible did happen and Kensuke was caught in the crossfire, it wasn't going to help make the situation any better for any of them.

"Okay, okay, the second something goes wrong, we'll cut the activation test and send him home," she told him.

"Thank you," he responded.

"No offense, but I'm starting to see where you get your sense of concern. Even your mother is concerned about his safety. So much so that she prescribed him contacts that were waterproof so as to not hinder his vision. She still insisted on the use of the experimental autopilot system in case we needed it."

Shinji couldn't help but smile at the thought of his mother insisting on the Dummy System in case it was necessary.

"You be careful, too," he told her.

"Yeah," she responded.

-x-

It must've been only under special circumstances that Rei Ayanami was seen in the base at odd hours, but Fusei found the girl's vacant expression to be…almost intimidating for some reason she couldn't explain. And now, here they were, in an elevator on their way to the medical ward for the young lady's physical that Dr. Akagi was supposed to be in charge of doing, but Fusei found herself doing in her place. As they were standing on opposite sides of the elevator, Fusei pondered whether or not to say anything to Rei. What could she say to her that was worth talking about to one such as herself?

Ding! The elevator had reached their floor and the doors opened.

Fusei sighed and stepped out.

"I don't believe that you're Ikari-Kun's mother, Ms. Hitode," she heard the albino girl say to her in the hall.

"Excuse me?" She turned to face her. "What are you talking about?"

"You claim to be his mother," Rei stated, her face slowly contorting into an expression of disgust. "You claim that he is your child, but this cannot be true."

"And where would you hear something like this?" Fusei wanted to know.

"I overheard your conversation with Ikari-Kun…and find it only to be a falsehood belief…and so does Commander Ikari." Rei explained.

"I think there's a lot that you don't have a complete understanding about, Ms. Ayanami. And to just jump to conclusions isn't the best form of judgment one can take."

"Yet, you made a claim to being his mother when his background file states clearly that his mother is deceased."

Fusei sighed, realizing that this girl was clearly not going to be misled by her, and expressed, "But how can you be sure that his mother is deceased? How can you be certain that the woman who died long ago even was his mother?"

"Commander Ikari married a woman by the name of Yui Ikari. Shortly after, they had only one child together before she passed away years later. That child is Ikari-Kun."

"How did they have a child together? There's more than one way for two people to start a family after getting married."

"They…they…" But Rei couldn't finish her response; she only knew that Commander Ikari and his late wife had Ikari-Kun, but not the exact nature as to how so. _How did they obtain the boy that is Ikari-Kun?_

Fusei had clearly bested the girl in the conversation if she was unable to answer the question.

"What you see for yourself, hear from others or even say to others isn't always as clear as the truth, Ms. Ayanami," she told her. "And sometimes, the truth is harder to face than the light of the day. But I won't tell you what to believe. These are desperate times and desperate days. In times of desperation, people will believe whatever it is they want to believe in. Nobody's exempt from this way of thinking. But if they can prove what they believe in to not be that of desperation, then it becomes nothing but the truth, not a falsehood assumption or what have you. Shall we?"

When she resumed her walk to the room where the young girl's appointment was to be, Rei was left to question what Commander Ikari had instructed of her. While being told to disbelieve the woman that claimed to be the Third Child's mother, she wasn't informed of how the boy was related to the Ikaris if there was no blood between them.

-x-

Evangelion Unit-03, a dark and frightening behemoth of one-hundred meters in height, creeped even Misato as she stood in front of it at the testing facility in Matsushiro.

"Well, Kensuke," she said to the boy as he stood a few feet from her, "Are you ready?"

Sporting s green, camouflage-themed plugsuit, Kensuke, with his new contact lenses installed, looked at Misato and responded, "Yes, ma'am."

-x-

"…They should be beginning within the next half-hour, Shinji," Fusei told her son, finding him on the school rooftop that afternoon, referring to the activation test.

Even with the precautions taken, the boy couldn't stop worrying about his friend.

"How'd you know where to find me?" He asked her, turning away from the fence.

"I looked at your file and the address of the school you attend was in it. I'm hoping that they don't put Mr. Aida in the Eva at all and use the Dummy Plug instead."

"I appreciate all that you've done."

"You're welcome. Can I ask you to do something if something in the test does go wrong?"

"What is it?"

"This is only if they put Mr. Aida in the Eva… Do whatever you feel you have to in order to save your friend, but don't throw your life away in the process. I don't know if I have it in me to go through with losing you, even if I took some precautions to prevent dangerous risks from ever being attempted."

"Yes, ma'am."

Fusei then took out her phone and dialed a number.

"Hello, Ms. Katsuragi," she uttered, surprising Shinji with having her number. "This is Fusei Hitode. I'm with Shinji right now. The reason I'm calling is to see how the activation test is going. What? She did? Did you check to make sure? I'll tell him right now. Don't hang up."

She looked at Shinji with a hopeful expression.

"Doctor Akagi decided at the last minute to substitute Mr. Aida for use of the Dummy Plug," she revealed to him. "He's being sent home for a few days until Unit-03 has been transported back to the Geo-Front for further synchronization testing."

Shinji felt relieved to hear that as he smiled.

"Thank you," he praised. "Thank you."

Suddenly, the sounds coming through Fusei's phone speakers sounded like an alarm and people yelling; something was going down in Matsushiro.

"Miss Katsuragi?" She asked. "Miss Katsuragi?! What's going on?!"

As she was trying to listen, all she heard what was odd to hear: "It's an Angel?" But then the call disconnected and all she got was a dead, dial tone.

Shinji was worried about whatever it was that happened at Matsushiro. He wanted to know if Misato and Kensuke were alright.

"We're going to find out what happened, Shinji," Fusei told him, putting her hands on his shoulders, trying to reassure him. "Try to stay calm."

-x-

"Urgh," groaned Kensuke, coming to as he found himself hanging upside-down in the back seat of the Sedan that the explosion turned over, sporting a small gash on his forehead. "Wha…what happened?"

The driver appeared dead, and the ground shook every three seconds.

Looking outside the damaged window beside him as he tried to get out of his seatbelt, Kensuke saw something large and black walking away from where the Matsushiro testing facility partially stood and looked reduced to a decrepit state. It…it looked like Unit-03, but with longer arms that were limp and just hanging to its sides.

"Ugh," Kensuke groaned as he fell out of the seat and onto the overturned roof of the car.

He crawled out of the broken window on the other side and struggled to stand up. Using the car to lean on, the otaku looked around and found a broken piece of pipe a few feet from the car. With whatever strength he could muster, he staggered over across the road to get to it; he could get around more freely with some piece of piping better than a car with a dead driver, and he needed to go back to the damaged testing facility to look for survivors…and hopefully a phone or radio that still functioned.

"What happened?" He wondered, grabbing the pipe that was longer than himself but sturdy enough to use as a crutch. "What happened?"

-x-

The Matsushiro testing facility was partially damaged in a small explosion caused by a weak AT-Field being used offensively. All the bridge crew of Central Dogma could ascertain from the disconnected phone call that Fusei had with Misato was that it was caused by an Angel that was there, but the question of how it got there without warning had yet to be answered. As a search and rescue team was being dispatched by NERV to look for the survivors, the veteran Evangelion pilots were placed in their Entry Plugs to be sortied against the Angel that was approaching the city.

Shinji was uncomfortable with the idea of Commander Ikari taking control of the situation; he didn't feel that anyone with his behavior should ever dictate how any of them should face an Angel at all.

Fusei was in the same boat as her son. Even as she sat at the console Ms. Ibuki normally sat at, she feared for the worst with Gendo taking charge.

"Target within range now," she heard Shigeru say as the new Angel appeared on the holographic displays. "You've gotta be kidding me."

The Angel, or rather, the Evangelion that was being tested, was slowly walking through the countryside as the sun began to go down for the day.

"This is bad," Fusei sighed. "This is really bad."

She sent the signal to try and force-eject the plug from the Eva.

On the displays, the back of the Eva's casing for the plug blew off, revealing a series of muscle and nerve tissue covering the red Dummy Plug, preventing it from being completely removed.

-x-

"…Okay, this is what we know so far," Shinji and the girls heard Fusei say to them as their Evas were on the surface at the edge of the countryside to intercept the Angel. "The Angel has somehow hijacked Unit-03 like a puppet and is slowly advancing towards the city. Force-ejection of the Dummy Plug used to substitute a standard Entry Plug and Kensuke Aida has proven ineffective due to the Angel keeping the plug onboard through a series of muscle and nerve tissue, which suggests that the Angel needs the plug to stay active."

"An Eva was just taken over by an Angel?" Asuka questioned, having Unit-02 carry a large rocket launcher over its right shoulder.

"Be advised that the plug inside the Eva is an empty vessel," Fusei reiterated to the three. "I repeat, the plug is devoid of anyone, living or dead. It's just an autopilot piece of machinery."

"Noted," Shinji responded; he was grateful to hear this, and because they were in the countryside, the potential collateral damage from dealing with the Angel could be limited to just the environment. "So, it's possible that if we remove the plug, the Eva will stop."

"That's only a possibility…until you try it. If you can't remove the plug, you'll have to take out the Angel entirely."

These were their only options: Remove the Dummy Plug if possible…or destroy the possessed Evangelion if necessary.

"Well, Shinji," went Asuka through the intercom, "your biggest fan knows what to say and her suggestions might work out for this job."

"Thank you, Asuka."

Before she could respond, the redhead saw the black Eva appear beside the hill she was stationed near, and it was looking at her.

"Scheisse!" She cursed in German, quickly turning to face it and blast it away with the rocket launcher. "Eat this, Angel!"

She fired, but the Angel erected its AT-Field to block the rocket attack. Unfortunately for the Angel, its field wasn't as strong as it could've been due to the other Eva being present, and its waist now sported a minor gash that wasn't healing. Then, Asuka took out her Prog. Knife and stabbed the black Eva in the right shoulder, tackling it to the ground.

Crash! The ground shook and small portions of dirt was sent flying.

Asuka saw the red plug and reached for it.

The Angel grabbed her left arm and kicked her away before it could get up.

-x-

The place was a mess, but Kensuke hadn't found anyone yet.

"Hello?" He called out to the ravaged environment, hoping to find someone. "Miss Misato? Anyone? Hello?"

"He… Help," he heard a female voice under a fallen piece of a wall nearby.

He went over and found the boyish woman, Maya Ibuki, pinned.

"Hold on," he told her, hoping that he could remove the wall from off of her. "What happened?"

"Unit-03… It was an Angel. It was infested and taken over by an Angel."

The piece of wall wasn't all that heavy for him to lift up, but Kensuke couldn't toss it aside.

"Can you crawl out from under?" He asked her.

"No. No, I… I can't feel my legs," she told him, worried. "I can't feel my legs."

He looked under the wall as best he could…and saw her leg, but they looked like they had been pummeled by more than just the wall.

"Okay, don't panic," he told her, trying to turn the wall over completely. "I'll try to pull you out."

"Thank you."

Once he turned the wall over, he grabbed the pipe and told her to hold onto it as tight as she could while he tried to pull her out of the rubble.

"Aaaurgh," he grunted, feeling like his insides were on fire as he pulled the pipe.

Maya felt herself slowly moving forward because of the Fourth Child, and was free from the rubble in less than a minute.

Kensuke then turned her over.

"Aah, aah, aah!" She gasped, hurt from the turning.

"Sorry, sorry," he apologized to her. "Okay… I'm going to try and find others. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Maya nodded as she laid there.

-x-

Unit-02 had the Angel pinned to the hillside, but it was impossible to remove the plug, and its umbilical cable had been severed, leaving it with less than three minutes of operational power before it shut down.

"ETA is twenty seconds away," Asuka heard one of the technicians say to her, seeing Units-00 and 01 approaching.

"You two took long enough," she told them, just as her Eva's hold on the Angel was beginning to weaken. "Yank out the damn plug!"

Unit-00 reached for the plug, but Unit-03 suddenly sprouted out a pair of fleshy arms from its shoulder pylons to grab its neck.

"Aah!" Rei gasped, feeling her throat tighten.

Unit-01 quickly grabbed the plug's end and began to extract, but the muscle and nerves surrounding the plug began to fuse with its right hand.

"Aaah!" Shinji gasped, feeling like his own hand was set on fire while being bitten on by something with teeth. "Aaah!"

"The Angel's trying to fuse with Unit-01!" He heard one of the male technicians reveal.

"Detonate the arm," he heard Commander Ikari order. "Sever it off."

"Sir, he's still synced with the Eva," he heard his mother tell him. "We can't sever the arm without harming him."

"Cut it off," the commander repeated, making no hint that he wanted the deed done now.

Shinji tried desperately to remove the Dummy Plug from the Eva before it lost its arm. Using the Eva's left arm to grab the plug tighter, he felt it begin to loosen.

"Graurgh!" The Angel growled, tightening its grip on the blue Eva's neck.

"Aah!" Rei screamed.

Boom! The plug Shinji tried to to remove suddenly smoked up and caught on fire.

"Graurgh!" The Angel groaned as the black Eva went limp, its regular arms no longer struggling against Unit-02 and its fleshy arm falling from Unit-00.

Even the muscle and nerve tissues trying to fuse with Unit-01's arm reversed itself.

"The blue pattern's disappeared," all three pilots heard a female technician say.

"What happened?" Shinji asked.

"The Dummy Plug's internal programming did as it was instructed to do," Fusei's voice spoke up. "In the event that it made the Eva do something to endanger the life of the pilot, even endangering the Entry Plug, it ceases functionality and burns out."

"You made an autopilot system capable of doing an emergency self-destruct if it comes close to endangering lives?" Asuka questioned. "I guess we were fortunate enough that this Angel decided to fight back against removing it. It ended up being the instrument of its own downfall."

"Yeah… Thank you, Dr. Hitode." Shinji praised her.

-x-

"…Hey! Over here!" A male voice shouted. "The kid found another survivor!"

Opening her eyes with a concussion, Misato found herself on a stretcher looking up at the night sky; she felt like she'd been asleep for a long time.

"Hey, kid, that's enough," she heard someone else say. "Lie down and let a doctor look at you."

"Umm… What…happened?" She uttered.

"Hey, Katsuragi," she heard Kaji's voice as he showed up. "Try not to move."

"What happened?"

"Unit-03 turned out to be an Angel…and was quickly taken out," he explained.

"Aida? What happened to Aida?"

"His car was flipped over and crashed in the explosion. The driver was killed instantly. The boy survived, but only barely, and came back to find survivors. He found forty-seven out of the two-hundred staffed here, including Ibuki."

Misato turned her head to her right and saw the boyish-looking woman laying unconscious on another stretcher with her legs bound together by makeshift casts.

"His car gets flipped in the explosion, he gets injured…and he comes back to find survivors?" She questioned, actually impressed by his actions. "If I could, I'd give him a medal for his selflessness, the young man."

"Even though he found at least eight dead, he didn't stop looking. That's how he found you and Ritsuko an hour ago."

To be continued…

A/N: I never expected this chapter to be so long, but it all resulted from the number of votes from the poll I set up for the viewers, and more voted for the third option over the other two.


	8. Grateful and Disheartened

Creation began on 04-18-17

Creation ended on 05-02-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Grateful and Disheartened

Gendo wasn't pleased at all with the outcome of the most recent Angel battle. He was hoping to break the Third Child's will, but due to unforeseen circumstances, his very relationship with the Hitode woman claiming to be his mother became stronger. Instead of a destroyed Eva that had been possessed by a parasitic Angel, NERV now had four Evas instead of three…and four pilots instead of three. He wasn't even happy with the way the Dummy System had been altered by Dr. Hitode's additional coding that was the only thing that saved all three pilots and was what kept the Fourth Child out of the intended version of harm's way.

Nothing was going his way at all, and he needed to deal with this matter.

-x-

Kensuke awoke to the sight of the hospital ceiling and the smell of an incense burning. His right arm was bandaged and his left leg was suspended in the air by a sling.

"Hey, Kensuke," he heard someone say his name and turned to his right, seeing Toji and Hikari sitting in front of him.

"How long was I out?" He asked them, hoping that they'd know.

"A doctor said you were unconscious for three days," explained Hikari to him. "You needed surgery for some internal injuries you got from a car accident you were in. You found over thirty people in a nearly-destroyed facility before a search and rescue crew arrived."

"Man, Kensuke, they say you didn't stop until found at least forty-seven and was forced to stop," Toji told him. "What were you thinking?"

"This woman that examined me had asked me a question that really got to me," Kensuke explained. "She asked me what would I feel while piloting the Eva, knowing that I was responsible for the fate of everyone everywhere. I wasn't in the Eva at the last moment, but I did feel responsible for everyone that got hurt at the facility. I had to find them, no matter what happened to me."

"A woman asked you a question?" Hikari questioned. "That must've been some heavy question she had asked of you."

"Say, what happened to Shinji and the girls?"

"They were examined and discharged the day before," Toji revealed to him. "The woman that discharged them was the same doctor that did your surgery. She seemed…rather unusual, kind of like she was emotional instead of logical."

"If she's who I think she is, then she's the same one that asked me the question, as well as a question about Shinji."

"The doctor that discharged them did seem to get Shinji's attention," said Hikari.

-x-

Although they were examined and given a clean bill of health by Fusei, Gendo still demanded to see the three veteran pilots and the woman in his office.

"…If they survived unscathed, then there shouldn't be a problem with any medical results," Fusei told Gendo in front of them.

"The way the Dummy Plug just self-destructed was a gamble that embarrasses NERV," he told her. "And not following orders when it comes to saving the Evas from the Angels jeopardizes our chances of surviving the next conflict."

"You ordered me to detonate the arm of Unit-01 while the pilot was still synced to it. Any forceful severing of an Eva's limbs, however major or minor the synchronization, brings unnecessary and potentially-long-term phantom pain to the subject in question. I couldn't carry out that order until the synchronization between them was cut off. Even if I was ordered to, I couldn't do something of that sort of brutality because it violates the oath that was taken."

"In situations of this magnitude, we sometimes need to disregard regulations."

Fusei then turned to face Shinji, who didn't say anything, but didn't agree with anything Gendo had said since they walked into his office.

"And your insistence on substituting the use of the Fourth Child in favor of the Dummy Plug was another gamble that NERV did not need to be troubled with," Gendo added.

"Except wasn't this the very reason that the Dummy Plug was made for?" Fusei countered him. "It had its trial run and could work with the Evas with the exception of Unit-00 due to its primitive design, even if the one it was used in was possessed by an Angel. It kept one of the pilots out of conflict, which would've hindered their synchronization with the Eva because they're ruled by their emotions. They're not slaves to logic."

"It was never intended to destroy itself during an intense situation. Your involvement with the project has put it at risk."

"I won't deny that I was uncomfortable with the idea of using it to begin with if it disregarded the need for the human element, Mr. Ikari, but the coding I installed in it didn't do anything wrong with the overall functionality. All I did was make it so that the Dummy Plug had a sense of morality to its programming, that it would ensure the protection of the pilots, first and foremost, even if it meant burning out its own circuitry."

"Basically, you took an autopilot system that was still in development," went Asuka, "and gave it a conscience so that it wouldn't harm people. It saved us from the Angel by self-destructing and all we did was get endangered for it to follow its instructions."

"Regardless of what happened," said Shinji, finally speaking up, "Dr. Hitode's actions in using the Dummy Plug and not following your order to sever Unit-01's arm were the lesser of two evils."

As much as Rei wanted to disagree with Shinji on that assumption, she held her tongue in check.

"If it were up to me right now, I'd let you go," Gendo told Fusei, indicating that he would've fired her on the spot, "unfortunately, I currently don't have that luxury, as Dr. Akagi's protégé is indisposed for the time being."

"Indisposed" wasn't the word Fusei would've chose for Maya Ibuki's current situation. She preferred "incapacitated" or "not of sound mind and body". Despite the best medical resources available to them, Maya wouldn't be walking anywhere for a while, even with physical therapy.

"At best, Ms. Ibuki's chances of recovering full use of her legs can range anywhere from three months to more than a year," Fusei suggested, hopeful of the young woman's chances of recovery.

"Which is time we may not have," Gendo stated.

"But we have four Evas now," Asuka reminded him.

"Three," he uttered. "For the time being, the Fourth Child is off the combat roster."

Shinji was fine with this, as it meant that Kensuke would be kept out of the Eva.

Asuka was fine with this, too, since it meant less trouble for them with the Angels the less the Fourth Child was in an Eva.

Rei was indifferent to the situation.

"And we can't rule out using Unit-03," he informed them, "until it has been thoroughly examined."

The guy wasn't willing to risk anything with Unit-03 until it was completely devoid of any possibility of contamination from the Angel.

"Rei, you and the Second Child are dismissed," he told the girls, and the albino nodded and turned to leave the office.

Asuka looked at Shinji and Fusei and merely sighed.

"See you later," she told Shinji and left.

When they were alone, Gendo clearly made no hint of his disgust with the boy and the woman.

"You both refuse to fall in line because some ridiculous assumption," he told them.

Shinji and Fusei looked at each other in silence before the woman responded, "What exactly are you talking about, sir?"

"You can cease the ignorant pretense," he told her. "You know damn well what I'm talking about. Even he doesn't deny what he believes to be the truth."

Fusei tilted her head down a little before saying, with a hint of anger that Shinji hadn't seen since he demonstrated his own towards Gendo, "Because what was done all those years ago was the truth, Mr. Ikari. The only question I'd like to have answered, because even I don't understand it, is why? Why did you…and your wife…choose to take him from me?"

Gendo crossed his fingers in front of his face as he often always did, contemplating his next move.

"I don't have to answer your false accusations," he uttered.

"You can't keep this quiet," she informed. "It's going to come out soon that you committed a crime that will have consequences because of the people it affected."

"And what people were affected?"

"That would be telling," said Shinji.

"Yes, Shinji," Fusei agreed with her son. "That would be telling."

"And you're willing to be manipulated by a woman you only met a few days ago, that clearly has her own agenda?" Gendo asked him.

"You're the only one with the agenda. Hers was to find me. You can't even admit you did something you knew was wrong. While I admit that knowing this truth has complicated my life, I can at least accept what I've been told as the truth…which is different from what I had thought was once the truth. I thought my mother was dead ever since I was little, only to find out she was just a woman I thought was my mother, that my father was some cold man that would never say any kind words, only to find out that my father's been dead for years, my parents were teenagers when they had me, but I can look past that. I'm just not sure if I can look past being able to forget everything about NERV, the Angels, the Evas and you when this is all over and I walk away from this all."

"What are you talking about?"

"We went to see Mr. Fuyutsuki earlier to ask him more questions. My only question to him was an obvious one, which was how many Angels there are left to be expected in this feud. There are only four of them left. When they're dealt with, I'm leaving the city with my mother."

Gendo was beyond furious, but kept his emotions in check.

Shinji and Fusei then turned to leave, leaving the man to ponder many thoughts on how to deal with the both of them.

"Oh, and there's something else you should know," went Fusei to Gendo. "Memo from Dr. Akagi: She contacted the Committee yesterday, and they want to speak with you about some recent discoveries that have left them feeling disheartened with you."

-x-

Although they were only broken and there was no need to amputate them, Maya still felt like an invalid because she couldn't move her toes, no matter what she did as she laid in the bed with her legs in slings.

The resulting explosion caused by the Angel usurping Unit-03 had not only injured more than one-hundred-seventeen people, but it killed everyone else that had been present when the explosion occurred, even though it had been contained to just the facility and a mile of land on all sides.

She was grateful to the Fourth Child for finding her and pulling her free from the debris.

Several workers were also grateful for him finding them when he came back.

The door to her room slid open and Dr. Akagi stepped inside.

"Hello, Maya," she greeted her. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I need another dose of ibuprofen for my headache," she answered her. "They said I'd likely be able to walk again after rehabilitation in a few months to a year."

"Which, for the time being, you're on medical leave until you recover."

"I can still work with a portable terminal."

"Except you don't really have to. Doctor Hitode is willing to fill in for you until you recover."

"Why her?"

"She feels responsible for what happened. She kept insisting that the Dummy System be used instead of the Fourth Child…because she worried over the emotional state of the Third Child."

"She worried about the Third Child? Lately, it seems like she favors him for some reason."

"Believe it or not, she has every right to favor the boy. The rumor that started after the Fifth Angel and her arrival to NERV…uncovered some really disturbing facts."

"The blood types and such?"

"That's right. It turns out that some things we thought were true weren't entirely true."

"What are you talking about?"

"The commander isn't the Third Child's father. There was never any blood relation between them. And his mother is actually Ms. Hitode."

"What? But…that's not… How?"

"That's what we're still trying to understand."

-x-

"…A Dummy System with a moral obligation to ensure the safety of the pilots over the destruction of the Angels?" SEELE 06 questioned Gendo over the discovery of what Dr. Hitode had done to affect the autopilot system. "How is such a program possible, Ikari?!"

"Doctor Fusei Hitode is a new employee who is divided between her responsibilities as a computer technician and a medical practitioner," Gendo tried to explain with that excuse. "She's also delusional. She's convinced that the Third Child is her son and is trying to manipulate him into believing her."

"We were informed of the DNA evidence by Dr. Akagi that actually confirms what she told us earlier," said SEELE 12 to him. "This discovery brings into question what else you have kept hidden from this council, Ikari. One other factor is the decreased synchronization between the Third Child and one of the Evas. We demand an explanation."

"The woman is interfering with his synchronization abilities," Gendo tried. "Her delusional belief that she's his mother has caused him to question whether or not his real mother is his mother."

"Except the genetic testing confirms that your late wife has no genetic ties to the Third Child," went SEELE 03 to him, which caused murmurs from several other members of the council. "They prove that this Hitode woman is the boy's mother, meaning he has no relation to either you or your wife, which brings into question how you acquired the boy…and how he was able to sync with the Eva when such a requirement was never truly met, Ikari?"

"If a pilot is able to sync with the Eva before discovering their mother was still alive," SEELE 01 uttered, "and their synchronization falters after knowing the truth… This degree of interference is unacceptable, Ikari, and this act of manipulation, however small and insignificant, is something we cannot tolerate because there are those that know what you have done and will take action against you for your role in the criminal act. We demand an explanation from you on what you did, immediately."

Now Gendo, regardless of how much he wanted to disregard the truth, had to explain why there was no biological relation between the Third Child and his wife and he. At first, he thought he could just lie, but SEELE didn't like lies unless they were the ones perpetrating the lies, and there was always the chance that they had other ways to tell that he was lying to him because of how they grew weary of him over time. And his memories of that day, that decaying day, were all but dead and forgotten.

-x-

This time, Shinji barely felt like he was connecting to the Eva at all. It had nothing to do with the attempted contamination by the previous Angel, which was nonexistent. No, it was more like he simply felt nothing from the Eva. There was…nothing to be felt.

"His synchronization is below thirty percent," said Ritsuko to Misato as they were running the test.

"I thought you said he was unaffected by the Angel," Misato responded.

"He was unaffected," Fusei told them, as she was monitoring the test of all three teens. "There was no residual trace of contamination in any of them."

The three couldn't understand why the Third Child's synchronization with the Eva was decreasing. Or rather, neither Misato of Fusei could understand why, but Ritsuko knew why this was happening.

 _Since there's no real bond between the boy and the so-called consciousness that dwells within the Eva, there isn't a true synchronization between them,_ the faux-blond thought. _It isn't all that different from the First Child and Unit-00._

"Miss Ayanami's holding steadily at fifty-three percent while Ms. Soryu's holding at seventy percent," Fusei told them.

"Doctor Hitode," Ritsuko asked, "can you rewrite one of the Dummy Plugs to use the Third Child's earlier synchronization information?"

"It's within theoretical possibility," she responded. "The question would be why?"

"We need a fail-safe backup in case his current synchronization information becomes unreliable."

"What about the Eva?" Misato suggested. "Unit-01 has always been the temperamental one. More so than Unit-00 has been. What if the problem isn't with the Third Child…but the Eva?"

"Commander Ikari will have my ass if Unit-01 has become compromised," Ritsuko explained. _You have no idea how much I agree with you that the Eva is the one with the problem._

-x-

SEELE was not pleased with what Gendo had revealed to them. If he had lied to them, there would be severe consequences. But he didn't lie to them.

It was shortly after Second Impact that Yui revealed to him that she couldn't have children of her own because of an incident she was in earlier in her past, so she told Gendo that they should find a child that didn't have any parents. They went to an understaffed, overburdened and damaged hospital in Tokyo under false pretenses and ended up finding a newborn baby boy in a bassinet beside the cot of teenage girl that looked dead among several other people that were either dead or dying because of the devastation done to the city. And then…Yui took the baby and they left before someone could stop them in place of the lack of security.

"So, your wife just took someone else's baby?" SEELE 05 asked him. "You both took a teen mother's child…and neither of you ever thought to confirm whether or not the mother was even deceased?"

"She looked dead!" Gendo expressed. "She was just laying there on the cot! She wasn't moving, wasn't breathing! I thought she was dead!"

"First rule of leaving a dead body, Ikari," said SEELE 03 to him. "Whenever you think somebody's dead, always check to make sure they're dead!"

"And neither of you checked for a pulse," added SEELE 11. "If the boy's mother were truly dead, this would be overlooked to a degree. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. You kidnapped a child and now his mother, who wasn't as dead as you thought she was, has come back for him, and if she has it in for desiring justice for the injustice she was dealt, then that is to be your problem."

"This all brings into question the other matter: If the Evas require the souls of women that bore children after Second Impact for there to be pilots compatible for them, and the Third Child's mother was never dead and never bound to the Eva, then what is it that really binds him to the Eva?" SEELE 01 brought up. "How do you propose resolving this issue…if you can even resolve it, Ikari?"

"If the boy's mother were, for some reason or another, not directly involved in his life currently," Gendo suggested, "then his attention could be directed back to the Eva."

"If you're suggesting that this Hitode woman were to be met with foul play," SEELE 11 suspected, "how do you plan of explaining to her son why and getting him to cooperate with NERV if even he knows there's nothing really keeping him from leaving right now? The remaining Angels, be damned because of you."

"For now, Ikari, it's best not to go and threaten the mother and expect obedience from her son," SEELE 07 told him. "If she was able to make the Dummy System act in defense of the pilots' lives, then who's to say that she can't get it to stop entirely if she was in the mood to do so? Or behave no differently from the way the pilots do whenever they're in the Evas? Doctor Akagi has expressed her opinion that Dr. Hitode, despite being more of a physician than a computer expert, is close to being her superior in the field of coding…if not her equal, and that it would be in the best interests of NERV that she be left alone. And with her protégé, Ibuki, currently incapacitated, your personnel will require her services now more than ever."

Gendo hated this discovery! Bad enough that the old men now knew that NERV (really just Gendo himself) had placed their survival in the hands of someone's bastard child, but now they had to rely on the child's mother just because their personnel took a heavy blow due to the Angel that possessed Unit-03, which was salvaged from the attack.

-x-

"Hey, Kensuke," greeted Shinji at the medical ward where his friend was.

"Hey, Shinji," the otaku responded. "How you been?"

"I just got through with a synchronization test. They'll probably replace me soon."

"Why would they replace you? They were about to put me in the Eva, but then they decided to that day and sent me home until later. I really wanted to do it."

"I'm glad they didn't. Misato got injured and Commander Ikari took charge in dealing with the Angel that was possessing Unit-03, the Eva you were supposed to pilot."

"The Eva…got hijacked by an Angel?"

"That's right. It took over the instant the Eva was activated and caused the explosion that hurt you and everyone else that was there. We were fortunate that the Eva had an autopilot device in place of you, otherwise, we would've had to… If it ever came down to that."

"What do the pilots feel when they're in the Evas," Kensuke sighed. "The good doctor asked me that."

"I didn't need the possible death of a friend on my conscience if something went wrong with the mission. I would've wanted to stop piloting the Eva after that because I couldn't live with the guilt."

Kensuke suddenly got the feeling that the doctor that asked him these weird questions was very close to Shinji and was the reason he was unable to get into the Eva that day, thereby saving his life.

"Say, that woman, the good doctor," he uttered to Shinji. "I think her name was Hitode… What's with the two of you, anyway? She asked me about you."

"It's…complicated, really," Shinji responded; it was still difficult to comprehend how others would react if he just up and told them that he found out about his mother being alive and recently involved in his life after so many years of absence.

"Bull, Shinji," Kensuke told him. "Whatever it is, I can take it. I got hurt from an Angel and went to find people that might've survived the explosion without any concern for my safety. Surely, you can trust me with whatever it is that you're hiding."

Sighing, Shinji gave in and decided to explain it to the otaku as best as he could.

"It was only recently that I found out something that was hard to comprehend," he started. "Please, don't tell anyone about this, no matter what. Doctor Hitode…is actually my mother. My real mother. I'm not really related to the Ikari family at all, meaning Commander Ikari isn't my father. Never was, never will be."

Now Kensuke was at a loss for words. It would've made perfect sense for why the woman asked him about Shinji; certain parents just wanted to make sure their children were doing fine when they're not there, and this Hitode woman was no exception, wanting to know who her son was outside of his life as a pilot for the Eva. And he couldn't disbelieve Shinji; he knew the boy couldn't make a lie this elaborate, even if he had years to build it up.

"Really?" He spoke. "I mean, she looks… She has to be around Misato's age, doesn't she?"

"It's not unheard of, Kensuke," Shinji told him. "She was about two years under my real father when they first met. She was thirteen when she got pregnant and fourteen when she had me, after Second Impact occurred."

"But…if she is your mother… How'd you end up with a family with a cold man you thought was your father? I mean, what, did she give you up or…"

"No, no, she never did that. As far as we both know, I was just taken from her one day while I was less than a week old. And as far as I know, that day still hurts her."

"Then…you were likely kidnapped…and led to believe that the Ikaris were your family. That's just… That's just hurtful. How many people know about this? Your relation to her, I mean?"

"Just that man, Misato, Dr. Akagi and Asuka so far. I don't want to cause problems by telling everyone about this. Can I trust you not to tell anyone?"

-x-

She felt like it could come to life at any moment and grab her and eat her. This was how Fusei felt, standing in front of Unit-01 in the cages right now. It bothered her to no end that she decided to come and look at the Test-Type Eva after taking a break from reworking one of the Dummy Plugs to accommodate her son's synchronization data. She didn't question the coloring or the unusual, upper torso configuration that set it apart from the other Evas so far, but there was something about it that gave her a reason to feel great concern for Shinji.

 _Unit-00 was the Prototype Eva after years of trial and error,_ she thought, going over the Eva Series in the chronological order that existed. _Judging from the trial and error that went into making that particular Eva, the makers must've worked on several versions of the original Eva until they made one that worked. Unit-01 probably takes the workings of the successful version of Unit-00, but functions differently than the prototype, which would explain a part of why it's called the Test-Type. Probably another reason for the upper torso configuration. And then, there's Unit-02, which takes the trial and error of the first two Evas without the bugs, resulting in the final model that's being produced, something that Ms. Soryu prides herself over. Units-03 and 04 use the production information used for Unit-02 and continue to develop the production models. Yet, for some reason, this Eva seems to be more valuable than the others_ _…_ _and it bothers me._

"Ritsuko thinks the problem is with Unit-01," she heard Misato say, snapping her out of her train of thought. "Not with Shinji."

"Hmm?" She responded, looking to her right and seeing the purple-haired woman. "I say this only because I'm a physician, but shouldn't you be resting? Not many people should be working with a mending injury."

Having a broken left arm in a sling and a mild concussion from the failed Unit-03 activation test was the least of Misato's concerns right now.

"I can still work," she told Fusei, "and it's not like I can take a vacation after what happened."

"Medical leave is not the same as a vacation, despite both having the injured take time off to recoup."

"And again, it was a bold move you made, getting the Dummy Plug to fry itself should the children be placed in inescapable jeopardy…and not severing Unit-01's arm while Shinji was still synced with it."

"I wasn't going to follow that order, even if it came from that man. It'll be about another half-hour or so before the Dummy Plug I'm working will have accommodated Shinji's earlier synchronization data."

"If it works out until we figure out what's going on, he won't have to pilot as much as he used to."

"You have no idea how much I'd like for him to stop. Ever since I found out what he does here, it worries me to no end that every time he goes up against these creatures could very well be his last time. Some of the personnel here probably have stress trying to make sure that these kids live to see old age, but are reminded a bit that there are no guarantees when it comes to the Eva or the Angels."

"If it's between the Evas and the pilots…I'll sacrifice the Evas over the pilots if it means saving them. Evas can be repaired, rebuilt, even replaced. It's people that can't be replaced. Ever."

"Same here, Ms. Katsuragi. Same here."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Feel free."

"What do you do when you can't sleep at night?"

"I think of who and what matters to me."

"And those that cause you problems?"

"I feel nothing but contempt…and pity."

"What are your plans for after the Angels are defeated and there's no further need for the Evas?"

"Continue to build up my relationship with Shinji, introduce him his relatives on my side and his father's side…and see where that all goes."

Unbeknownst to either woman, Ritsuko was monitoring them through the surveillance cameras, eavesdropping on their conversation. She didn't say it, but before Fusei arrived, she really wanted to think very little of Shinji outside his usage as an Eva pilot. But with how things have been slowly revealed, she had to admit, if only to herself, that she had some dislike of him because of the belief and assumption that he was Ikari's son, a rather ill-fated situation. Thanks to Fusei, however, she didn't have this hatred of him as much now, just pity that he was a victim of factors beyond his control.

 _I hope she can free her son from this agency,_ she thought, really hoping for those two to be able to get away once this was all said and done with the Angels.

-x-

 _"Tread with caution, Ikari,"_ Gendo recalled the warning he was given by SEELE 01 when the meeting ended. _"Do not do anything to this Hitode woman that jeopardizes the usefulness of the Third Child. Leave her to her day-to-day routines. That's an order. And should she choose to come after you for your crime against the boy and herself_ _…_ _seek to settle if possible."_

Except that he didn't want to settle with the woman…and he didn't want to lose the Third Child until he had outlived his usefulness. So long as the Angels were still out there, he needed the boy to pilot the Eva until they were defeated and he could achieve his own goal for Instrumentality.

 _If they think I'm going to stand by and be disrespected by a woman that was supposed to be dead, they all have another thing coming to them,_ he thought, returning to his office to work on a new plan of recourse in dealing with the delusional woman that threatened to take off with the boy when this was all over. _Everyone here is expendable, including her._

-x-

Fusei couldn't believe her ears when Shinji told her that he didn't know a thing about the communication app that was FaceTime. When he told her that all he really knew were texting and instant messaging, she had him sit with her in the cafeteria after synchronization testing was done for the day so that she could teach him how FaceTime worked.

"…I was about to call my sister today to see how she was doing," she told him, setting her tablet on the table in front of them. "It would be nice of you two to meet for the first time in…"

She didn't finish her sentence.

Shinji didn't need to hear the rest. Whoever his real, maternal aunt was, he hadn't seen her since he was a newborn, so there were no memories on his part, not like how there were with his relatives.

"I hope she'll like me," he said to her.

Fusei smiled and placed a reassuring left hand on his shoulder.

"She's bound to like you a lot, Shinji," she responded.

On her tablet screen, a woman's face popped up. She had a slight resemblance to Fusei, only older and with shorter hair that had a grayish bang on her left side wrapped in a small braid.

"Fusei?" She asked.

"Hey, sis," Fusei greeted her. "How are you?"

"Another one of my friends up and decided to tie the knot with her boyfriend, and she wants me to attend her wedding. Suddenly, it feels like everybody wants to get married before they turn thirty or something. No sense of… Never mind that, Fusei, what about you? How has Tokyo-3 been to you?"

"A long search has paid off. Shinko-Kinomi, meet Shinji. Shinji, this is my big sister, Shinko-Kinomi."

"Hello, ma'am," Shinji greeted her.

Shinko-Kinomi's face became a little blank as she looked at Shinji. It was almost like looking at Fusei a little, only with her boyfriend thrown into the mix. He looked so much like them; the only thing off were his eyes, which seemed weathered, having seen or endured much of what this young man shouldn't have.

"Hello, Shinji," she uttered, sounding a little sad. "It's great to see you."

Suddenly, Shinji's eyes started tearing…and he wasn't sure why. He had just met his mother's sister for the first time in over a decade, and yet it felt like he had seen her before, from an earlier time.

"It's great to see you, too," he responded.

-x-

The door to Fuyutsuki's cell opened, and the elder saw Gendo step inside.

"What brings you down here?" He asked the Machiavellian as he sat up on the cot in front of him.

"It came to my attention that you've been off your meds after you were incarcerated here," Gendo stated, "and you've had visitors when you shouldn't."

"So you're here to inform me that my visitation privileges are being cut off? You really think that is going to hurt me any more than the truth has already done so?"

"You've divulged sensitive information to people that had no right to know about anything."

"That's your opinion. Mine's the only one that matters here. There's no point in keeping the truth hidden, anymore. Whatever loyalty I had for NERV eroded the day I found out the truth about the boy. He was never your son. He was never her son. He was your martyr. An orphan of providence that you thought you could exploit for your own purposes. Except you can't control him, anymore. And since the truth is bound to come out sooner or later, I might as well come clean with another hidden truth you knew nothing about. It's about Yui."

"I don't need to know."

"She told me not to tell you, but she may as well have lied to me, too."

"Tell me what?"

-x-

"…See you tomorrow, then," said Shinji to Fusei as he left NERV HQ for the day.

"Same here. Stay safe." She told him.

Shinji stuck around for a few seconds, wanting to say something else to her, but the words he wanted to say didn't make it to his mouth. Instead, he merely waved goodbye to Fusei.

On the bridge in Central Dogma, at Maya's station, the woman began the night shift and starting working on the adaptability of the Dummy Plug that was encoded with her son's synchronization data, hoping to create a substitute for the Eva that kept him out of it for a while. She thought she was by herself in the large room…until she heard Ritsuko's voice.

"It sounded like he wanted to tell you something," she told her.

Turning to face the faux-blond, she responded, "I know he wanted to tell me something. He wasn't sure what to say to me before he left. He's still coping, adjusting. I don't blame him if he can't tell me just yet. I don't want to pressure him into saying the wrong thing he may regret saying. I've waited so long just to find him, to meet him and talk to him. I'm willing to wait longer just to have a stable relationship with him. For now, him just knowing that I'm here for him is enough for me."

"How do you do it? Show patience for a child that has difficulty saying things or speaking up?"

"There's no logical methods, Dr. Akagi. You take the time to get to know someone, what their life story is and what they went through in their past, and you have clarity. You can't force them to be open or say what you want. If you want to be close, you have to be on stable ground, let people open up at their own pace. It's…it's not all that different from dancing…or doing laundry…or even cooking. We can't rush anything…with anyone."

Ritsuko felt like she was speaking with someone that actually understood Shinji to the very core, that wanted to understand him to the very core, that really wanted to be around him.

"I'm not sure I'll really be able to understand people without logic," she told the woman.

"Give it a try one day. Take all that they know…and put it aside. Just…flow down the river that is the conversation between you and whoever."

"And how do you avoid a conversation that may lead towards something…undesired?"

"You choose your words carefully."

-x-

Gendo wished he had killed Fuyutsuki for telling him what he had been kept in the dark on, but fate had intervened and preserved the elder's life. After being informed of how the contact experiment's cruel outcome with the Eva was really Yui's intention, to become the soul of the cybernetic behemoth to ensure a bright future ahead for everyone, he had trouble believing Fuyutsuki to be able to come up with an elaborate lie like that. He couldn't believe that Yui would just…let herself get reduced to a ghost in the shell…and refuse to return to life…or that she would only tell Fuyutsuki…who spent the last years since that agonizing day silently sneering at his grief.

"… _If you're going to kill me now, you might as well do it,"_ the Sub-Commander told him after telling him everything and apologizing for the sneering. _"I've more or less put what affairs I've had in order. I told the Third Child and his mother all that I know, hoping that they'll be able to walk away from this for good. They've already lost fourteen years together, and it would just be unforgivable to ruin whatever chances they have left of a future together."_

Gendo had taken out a pistol with the intent to blow the old man's head off; he didn't think on how to make it look like a suicide of how to explain his disappearance, just wanting to be rid of him.

But someone had snuck up behind him and tazed him in the neck.

He didn't revive until sometime later…and Fuyutsuki had fled.

"Grr…" He growled, wondering how long he had been unconscious and who could've aided the former metaphysical biologist to get away.

-x-

"You do know that if they find out you helped me, they'll kill you," said Fuyutsuki to his savior as they drove out of Tokyo-3.

"It may not matter," the man that tazed Gendo responded. "All I want is the truth…and it would seem that there are many different truths than the one I'm after. Hard to believe what was revealed. Never in a thousand years would I have believed that boy was never really his…or that his mother had been a lot younger than his wife had been before Second Impact. It's insane. Why would they do that?"

"If I knew, I'd turn them in for this. I still have hope for the boy and his mother."

-x-

Looking at his mother's charm again in the quiet night, Shinji sighed at how close he came to saying something so simple to Fusei, but how at the last second the words just wouldn't get to his voice. He wanted to express his affection for her, but a bitter memory of his childhood came up.

 _Of all the time where old memories of that sort to pop up, it had to happen just when I wanted to say that I love her,_ he thought, angry at himself for not saying anything to his mother as he left NERV.

Ring-ring! His cell phone rang, and he picked up.

"Hello?" He asked.

"Hey, Shinji, it's me," his mother's voice on the phone. "I was calling to see how you were doing before you probably went to sleep for the night."

"Oh, well, I'm just thinking. I'm about to go to bed now."

"You be sure to get plenty of rest, Shinji. You're bound to have a good day tomorrow."

"Yes, ma'am. I…I…"

"Shinji? Is there something wrong?"

"No, it's just… I… I love you, Mother."

There was a short silence between the two.

"I love you, too, Shinji," Fusei told him. "Good night."

"Good night," he responded, and then hung up. _I was able to say it. I was able to say it._

-x-

Setting her phone down, Fusei looked at Ritsuko, who seemed surprised to hear Shinji say what he said to the young mother.

"I didn't think he'd actually say that," she told her.

"I wasn't expecting him to say it, either," Fusei expressed, "but I'm glad he did."

"You need praise, too?"

"Just his is enough for me. Haven't you ever needed someone's acknowledgment or acceptance?"

"Not in that many words."

"Okay. What do you plan to do after the Angels are defeated?"

"I honestly don't know. Who has the time to plan ahead for their future?"

"Those that want to have a future after a situation they're dealing with. There's gotta be something you want after this is over. Think about it."

Ritsuko thought about it…but couldn't think of anything for herself in the eventuality of the Angels being defeated. She had wanted to make her mark in the world of science with something superior to the MAGI. It was supposed to be the Dummy System, but she had the minor feeling that that wasn't much of a success for her because, while she designed it to work with the Evas, Fusei had made it so that it had a conscience when dealing with the possibility of endangering the pilots, something she had cared nothing about because she had been willing to sacrifice them. The fact that the Third Child's mother had installed a safety net in it, it pretty much made it half her success, even if she didn't know.

"What are your plans?" She asked the young woman.

"I want to introduce Shinji to my mother and sister. I mean, he's already met my sister, but that's through FaceTime. I want him to see them in person. And his father's family, too."

"Okay, personal question, which you don't really need to answer, but it puzzles me about you. You were fourteen when you had Shinji, but you were in a relationship with your boyfriend, which I can only assume was good…but why didn't you two get married?"

Fusei sighed and looked down at her left hand.

"We planned to get married after Shinji was born," she explained. "He was going to become part of my family, as my sister and I had no brothers. Our parents gave us their blessing, but Second Impact came and…he died from exasperating his internal injuries three days after our son was born… It turned out I wasn't the only one that saw their child being taken away from them by somebody and tried to get up and stop them."

Fusei then realized that she had just told the faux-blond how her child was taken from her, not just how her boyfriend and lover had died.

Ritsuko, who didn't know exactly how this woman's kid had been removed from her life for so long, had her suspicions. Now she knew what happened…and more than likely who was the culprit that had harmed this woman and caused her to lose her son and her lover.

"I'm sorry for your loss," she apologized to her.

"It's okay. People say that wounds heal over time. It's not always true, but…thinking about the time I spent with him, it helps me to deal with his absence."

But Ritsuko also suspected that finding Shinji was another thing that helped this woman with her grief. To have finally found the child she had with her lover had spared her a lifetime of agony.

"I hated my mother," she told Fusei outright. "We didn't have a good relationship. There, I said it."

"You wanna talk about it?"

"No, but sure."

To be continued…

A/N: Any ideas of who saved Fuyutsuki? How Gendo's going to take the truth? The next Angel?


	9. Deliberate Risks

Creation began on 05-02-17

Creation ended on 05-30-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Deliberate Risks

"That's odd," said Ritsuko, getting Misato and Fusei's attention during the morning synchronization test they were doing with the Fourth Child.

"What is?" Fusei asked; it had been a week since the Eighth Angel incident and things were slowly going back to their previous state.

"Commander Ikari hasn't been seen or heard from since the sub-commander went missing," she explained to them.

Ever since Fuyutsuki disappeared from incarceration, the base hadn't received any orders from the unscrupulous man in charge for some time. Any footage or audio recordings that might've led to the whereabouts or people that could've aided in the elderly man's disappearance had disappeared, as well.

"But…doesn't he do that even when an Angel's around?" Fusei questioned; all Ritsuko had confided in her was that Gendo was rarely around whenever an Angel was present, even disappearing for days or weeks when there was no immediate danger to the city, which seemed like a poor excuse for the commander to take advantage of.

"Except the absence would often leave the sub-commander in charge," said Misato to her; she didn't mind the authority of being in charge in the absence of both commanders, but the fact that Gendo was rarely there left much to question in his authority.

"Is it safe to speak one's mind here?" Fusei asked them.

"Yes," Ritsuko answered her.

"It might be better if he were absent from the base indefinitely. I wouldn't call it firing him or suspending him from duty, but he'd be unable to make choices that shouldn't even be followed."

"You mean, like the order he made to detonate Unit-01's arm in the last battle?" Misato asked her; Shinji had told her about the incident prior to the self-destruction of the Dummy Plug, and felt that, even if it had been her leading the mission, she couldn't order an Eva's limb to be detonated unless the pilot's synchronization was cut off first or reduced enough to spare them unnecessary pain.

"I…I don't believe it was the right choice when there were other alternatives to be considered," she responded, but in truth, she just wouldn't do that to anyone unless there was no other choice.

"I don't blame you for thinking that," said Ritsuko to her; of all the personnel within NERV, Fusei was the only actual parent of an Eva pilot and was likely influenced by her maternal instincts to keep her son safe from harm. "Subject change, Hitode. Kaji asked me to return the item you lent him earlier and to tell you that it was quite the knockout."

The faux-blond then dug into the right pocket of her lab coat and gave the other woman a small, wrapped object.

"I do hope it helped him to a degree," she expressed, putting the object in her lab coat's left pocket. "Subject change. Mister Aida's synchronization is thirty-nine percent. Having him tested while he's still mending physically isn't helping either himself or us."

Ritsuko checked and confirmed her conclusion.

"Okay," she accepted. "We'll retest the First and Second Children and record their data for future installment in the Dummy Plugs."

"We're through with you for today, Mr. Aida," Misato told the boy through the intercom. "The medical team will vacate you from the Entry Plug and escort you back to your room to resume your recovery."

"Yes, ma'am," Kensuke responded.

-x-

In his room, Shinji, enjoying his weekend off, courtesy of Ritsuko after the last synchronization test didn't go so well, was reading a book on recipes that he decided to pick up on after recalling an earlier conversation he had with his mother about having an aspiration or even a hobby. He didn't understand what was wrong, as he had just cleared his mind like he always did, but the synchronization was now less than fifty percent. All Ritsuko and Misato told him was that it was likely a glitch in the Eva's system that was affecting his sync ratio.

Knock, knock. Someone knocked at his door.

"Who is it?" He asked.

"Asuka," answered the redhead outside. "May I come in?"

"Yes."

The door slid open and the girl stepped inside.

"I just heard from Misato that Kensuke was temporarily tested with the Eva, but his injuries make it impossible for him to have a sufficient sync ratio with it, so he's back to just being on the mend until he recovers," she told him. "And they're about to test the Dummy Plug again, but with your synchronization data to make sure it will work until they figure out what the glitch is with Unit-01."

"Thank you," he responded, while not truly disappointed in his poor synchronization with the Eva, pleased that Kensuke wouldn't be piloting an Eva until his injuries healed up. "What about you?"

"They're gonna retest me and Rei later today," she answered him. "There is no way I'm going to let some autopilot system pilot my Unit-02."

"My mother is just trying to make sure that you don't get hurt when facing an Angel that is likely to have an edge against us."

"As much as I respect her doing her job, I still have my pride."

"Except that pride isn't always a good thing, Asuka. One of the things I recently learned from my mother is that pride is often viewed as a sin because people focus too much on their personal value, status or accomplishments. You focus too much on your position as an Eva pilot, it could backfire."

"Yeah, I've read about it before you were drafted into being a pilot, Shinji."

"Then you know how the prideful were punished for their narcissism during medieval times…and how the proud can fall from their podium when something worse can happen to them."

Before Asuka could say something to counter his argument, their cell phones rang.

Sighing, Shinji answered his whilst Asuka answered hers.

"This is Shinji," he uttered.

-x-

A new Angel was approaching the city…and the defense measures to intercept it or even to slow it down were proving ineffective against it. It was massive, brutal…and laying waste to whatever attacked it and then some.

"At this rate, it'll be here in less than ten minutes," said Shigeru to Misato and Ritsuko.

"How far out are the Second and Third Children?" Ritsuko asked Hyuga.

"It'll be eight minutes before they get here!" He answered her.

"All we have right now is Ms. Ayanami and the Dummy System," said Fusei to Misato and Ritsuko, keeping Kensuke out of the situation.

"We'll send Rei out in Unit-01," Ritsuko suggested. "Load a Dummy Plug into Unit-02."

Fusei did as instructed, but had her concerns about sending the albino girl out in Unit-01 after the compatibility test where the purple Eva went crazy. It was that particular Eva that, despite her would-be courage to stand near it (even if it was only for a short while), just gave her the creeps.

-x-

The civilians were in a frightful frenzy! Trying to reach the nearest designated shelter to wait out the rampage of the Angel. Because of the streets being packed with cars and bikes, with people taking whatever they could carry, it made getting to the Geo-Front difficult for Shinji and Asuka.

"We're not going to get there in time!" Shinji gasped, seeing the Angel as it appeared from behind a hillside, being blasted with rockets from helicopters and jets, but its AT-Field kept it safe from harm. "Oh, no!"

"We can't give up!" Asuka told him, grabbing by his right arm and dragging him away with her.

The Angel unleashed energy blasts from its head and attacked a section of the city, reducing it to a smoldering hole.

Before it could do anything else, an Eva arose from out of the ground.

It was Unit-01.

"Unit-01?" Asuka questioned. "They must've put Wonder Girl in it."

Then, another Eva arose from underground. This time, it was Unit-02.

"Oh, Gott im Himmel, they didn't use the autopilot system on my Eva!" She shouted.

"What choice did they have? We're not there!"

-x-

The Entry Plug was beginning to no longer smell like him in Rei's mind. She deduced that it was because of the Hitode woman; the more she and Ikari-Kun grew in their relationship, the less she felt she was able to recognize his scent in the Eva…and it felt wrong.

Armed with a Pellet Rifle, the purple Eva fired at the Angel while the red one brandished its Prog. Knife and ran around the buildings on streets that were clear of people; with the majority of the shelters packed, there were few people present with the exception of the bunch around Shinji and Asuka.

"Unit-02 will take out the Angel from behind while Unit-01 engages with the Pellet Rifle," Major Katsuragi ordered Rei.

The pellets just bounced off the Angel's hide and fell to the ground and several buildings; even with its AT-Field slightly diminished, this Angel was in a class by itself in terms of defensive power.

When the rifle was emptied, the Angel unsheathed a strange weapon: Where two arms would've been if it had been more humanoid, a pair of thin, paper-like whips unfurled themselves and immediately slashed through three buildings in between it and Unit-01, causing massive damage as its rifle was sliced in half and itself being forced backwards away.

"Rei, fall back and retrieve a second rifle," she heard Major Katsuragi order her.

"Yes, Major Katsuragi," she responded, but something was off right now.

Instead of falling back a few blocks away to where the backup rifle was located in an armament building, Unit-01 charged towards the Angel!

"Rei, what are you doing?!" Major Katsuragi demanded. "Fall back!"

"Unit-01 is not following command," the girl responded; try as she might to will it to do as ordered, the Eva was not listening.

-x-

"What is going on?" Misato demanded from Ritsuko.

"The synchronization is being rejected," the faux-blond revealed as she checked on the terminal. "It's gone berserk again."

Fusei didn't like this. She had seen the earlier footage of Unit-01 engaging the Third Angel back when Shinji was initially drafted into service by Gendo, and was disturbed by the unpredictable brutality that had been unleashed by it. While she didn't put it past Shinji to be capable of similar brutality, the very idea of him having anything to do with the way Unit-01 behaved in any sortie was unlikely…and now she had a better understanding of how and why.

"Fusei," went Ritsuko to her, "did you remember to install the emergency feature inside Rei's plug?"

"Yes, two days ago," she answered, "but unless the pilot is placed in danger, the emergency system won't do anything."

On the screens, the purple Eva had dodged one of the Angel's strange whips, but lost its left arm. It managed to slam into the Angel, forcing it backwards, but it caused Unit-02 to become part of the massive blow as they all crashed right into a hillside.

"I don't like this, Fusei," Misato told her. "Eject Rei's plug, immediately."

"I can't force-eject the plug! Unit-01 has no force-ejection capabilities!"

"Say what?!"

This was an eye-opener. For all Fusei knew, she thought Misato had an intimate knowledge of the purple Eva; the only reason she knew about this tidbit of information was because she wanted to make absolutely sure that her son was kept safe from inevitable harm. When she found out that it had no emergency system for ejecting the plug, she had put in a request for the Eva to be worked on to include this feature.

"No force-eject for Unit-01!" She told Misato. "I'm trying to activate the Dummy System that was inserted into the plug with Rei! That should get the plug out!"

She typed in the necessary command codes, but received quite the surprise. The Eva rejected the signal activation code for the Dummy System.

"Okay, we have a serious problem with Unit-01," she told Misato.

-x-

As the remaining civilians ran into their designated shelters, Shinji and Asuka were able to run faster to the Geo-Front. The sooner they got there, the better, even though the Evas wouldn't be there for them.

The sight of Unit-02 getting up and trying to tear off the Angel's armored, skull-like face made Asuka wonder how the Dummy System could make the red behemoth seem so vicious.

The Angel then wrapped one of its paper-like limbs around its head and lifted it off, throwing it aside.

"Oh, come on!" Asuka groaned.

"Asuka, it's an autopilot system," Shinji sighed. "It's always going to have kinks in its design that need to be reworked until it can mirror or surpass us in terms of performance."

They reached an entrance way to the Geo-Front and ran inside.

-x-

"…Wait a minute, what do you mean, the Eva's rejecting the Dummy System?" Misato questioned Fusei.

"That's what I mean," she explained. "It's rejecting every attempt to activate it."

"What about Rei?"

"We're still reading her vitals, but her synchronization's nonexistent. That Eva's got a mind of its own."

On the screens, Unit-01, even with just its right arm, fought against the Angel no differently from when it fought the Third Angel. It behaved like a savage.

"Are we sure that Rei isn't controlling it?" Misato asked.

"I'm dead serious on her synchronization being nonexistent with the Eva," Fusei answered. "This thing's got a mind of its own."

RIP! The Eva tore the Angel's right limb off like it was literally made of paper, and caused some of its side to explode small sprays of blood into the air.

"Rei, are you alright?" Misato asked the albino girl.

"She's angry," they heard Rei on the intercom; the internal camera had been disabled.

"What do you mean? Who's angry?" Ritsuko questioned.

"The Eva," she answered. "The Eva is angry."

This was a shocker to hear.

The Eva then, with the assistance of Unit-02, tore the head of the Angel off successfully, exposing a lot of muscle tissue and no trace of bone, suggesting this Angel had some sort of exoskeletal structure or only possessed an incomplete internal structure. Then, without warning, Unit-01 began to tear through the Angel with its teeth.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Fusei uttered; it should've been impossible for an Evangelion to be capable of consumption beyond electrical requirements.

"It's eating the Angel?" Misato questioned.

 _It can't be,_ thought Ritsuko, realizing what the Eva was doing. _It's ingesting the_ _S² Organ into itself._

In less than a minute, Unit-01 had eaten away at the majority of the Angel and left the remains to Unit-02, who just seemed to pick at them before shutting down.

"Unit-02 has gone silent," Fusei informed the bridge.

Then, Unit-01 also shut down, opening up its back and ejecting the plug.

"Retrieve the pilot and Evas," Misato ordered, "and I want Unit-01 on lockdown."

-x-

"…Would you care for seconds, Mr. Fuyutsuki?" An elderly woman asked the man on the run from NERV.

"Oh, no. No thank you, ma'am," he answered, setting his empty bowl of teriyaki chicken and chicken-flavored ramen down. "One bowl was enough. Thank you again."

"So long as that man…or anyone that might be looking for you, for that matter, can't find you here, there's really no danger having you here."

"I pray that Ikari doesn't come looking for me here."

It was only by mere luck (and simple reasoning) that the disgraced sub-commander of NERV found sanctuary for the time being at the residence of a relative of a NERV worker.

"Could you tell me something?" The woman asked him.

"Sure," he answered.

"What is he like? I mean…is he a gentle soul…or a hardened soul?"

"He seems to be both at times. Very sensitive…but with difficulties due to his childhood."

The woman then looked at a nearby wall with several pictures hanging on it. She focused on one that featured a man, a woman and two girls in front of a cherry blossom tree. And next to it was a picture of one of the girls with a boy that was slightly older than herself, laying on the grass of a small hill.

"I look forward to the day where I can meet him for the first time in many years," she uttered.

Even though it had been three days since his arrival, Fuyutsuki still found it a little weird to be in the presence of Fusei's mother and Shinji's maternal grandmother. This was a woman who had only met her grandson just once, and that was when he was just a newborn to a fourteen-year-old mother…and hasn't seen him since because of the Ikari couple.

"Again, my apologies for what they did to your family," he apologized to her.

"You didn't know," she responded. "Blame goes only to those that know they're committing an injustice and do so, regardless of whom they hurt. Forgiveness to those that seek to rectify the atrocities committed in the past without creating new ones."

Except Fuyutsuki felt there would be no forgiveness for the Ikaris. Not with their reasons or agendas. And he had to accept that he was rather foolish and pathetic to let past affection and personal hatred define his former loyalty to the paramilitary agency.

"You must be very proud of your younger daughter," he uttered, reminding her that Fusei didn't stop looking for Shinji, even when it seemed hopeless.

"Extremely," she responded. "She never stopped feeling concern for him. Even when her chances of finding him were slim to none, she never stopped hoping."

-x-

Shinji wasn't sure what was more disturbing: The fact that Unit-01 ate an Angel…or the fact that it was suspended from duty after the battle. He was starting to think that it was a good thing he and Asuka never got involved in the battle against the Angel. And now, standing in front of the caged Eva that had defeated an Angel by eating it, he wasn't so sure if piloting this one was safe for anyone.

One of the worst things about what happened was that the Eva rejected the activation of the Dummy System, which put Rei in jeopardy, something Fusei was trying to remedy, along with how this particular Eva was the only one that lacked the emergency ejection system present in the other Evas.

"So, your Eva's off duty," he heard Asuka say to him, and he turned to his right to face her. "Does your mother know what's wrong with it?"

"It's become defective, she and Misato say," he explained; he had a feeling that his mother hadn't told him the whole situation with the Eva yet, but had a reason not to based on concern. "They're not sure when or if it will be resolved."

"I guess that means you're out of a job, then."

Shinji didn't try to retort to that.

"Did you hear about Ayanami?" He asked her instead.

"Yeah, she had no control over the Eva at all when she faced the Angel. It was completely out of control and placed her in danger. They're retesting her with Unit-00 and trying to get the autopilot system to work for it."

"There's some doubt that Unit-01 will ever face combat until its kinks have been worked out. And it was something about what she said."

"What did she say?"

"The Eva was angry."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"It's still what she said."

-x-

"…I don't like this," went Misato to Ritsuko as they were on the bridge in Central Dogma, discussing the status of Unit-01 and the Third Child without Fusei's presence. "I understand that there are still three Angels left, but if we try sending out Shinji in Unit-01 as it currently is, with no way to keep it in check, we risk putting him in danger…and opening ourselves up to his mother's fury."

"That's just the worst-case scenario," Ritsuko informed her. "Only if the Eva refuses to work with the Dummy System. It worked with Unit-02, but if Unit-01 refuses to work with it, we're short on options and alternatives."

"If this is the case, then I would authorize suspending Unit-01 from combat duty indefinitely until it's straighten out."

"Only Commander Ikari has the authority to authorize this."

"If he wants to question it, I will take it up with him when or if he returns from wherever he is. Until then, we're not using Unit-01 if it doesn't work with the Dummy System or a pilot when expected to."

As she walked away from Ritsuko, Misato was hoping that she was doing the right thing by suspending Shinji from pilot duty until they could work out the bugs in Unit-01, such as installing the necessary auto-ejection system to evacuate the Entry Plug from danger. This…and because of other factors that needed to be taken into account with their current situation that was hardly NERV-related.

Ritsuko, on the other hand, was trying to figure out how to get the purple Eva to fall in line with the program after that last battle…and if Commander Ikari insisted on the Third Child continuing to pilot the Eva, unaware or even uncaring of the potential risks involved now that it possessed an S² Engine in it…and disregarding the pilot's safety, there was no telling what could happen.

 _I better find out what happened with the Eva back when it was being built,_ she thought, turning to the MAGI. _The more that's learned, the better prepared we'll be._

-x-

 _Three Angels left,_ thought Shinji as he walked down the street to Misato's building as the sun started to go down. _How soon will they appear?_

Suddenly, a black Sedan rolled up on the road next to him and three men in black suits stepped out and surrounded him.

"Pilot Ikari?" One of them spoke.

"Who's asking?" He responded, and then saw his Commander Ikari climb out of the Sedan. _Oh. You._

"I'll only tell you this once, boy," Gendo uttered. "You're to cease your involvement with Dr. Hitode, effective immediately."

Again, Gendo was trying to keep him away from his mother out of the depraved sense that she wasn't his mother and had no right to be near him or interfere with his agenda.

"And what if I refuse to listen to you?" He asked him, refusing to be intimidated by the man that wasn't his father and had no right to order him around. "What should happen if I choose not to follow that order at all?"

"Then something terrible will befall her," he answered him; if causing something terrible, such as a car accident or a house robbery gone wrong, to happen to Fusei in order to break the Third Child, then Gendo was willing to go to such extremes to make sure he fell in line. "She only works at NERV. I run the agency. Do the math."

Then he got back into the Sedan with the suits and drove off, leaving the boy on the sidewalk to ponder the intimidation tactic used on him.

For the first time in the short period that he found out about his real mother and everything about his other blood relatives, Shinji feared for Fusei's safety. He had just gotten her back in his life after fourteen years of being separated from her…and now this crazy man was threatening to take her away from him. If he obeyed this order to stay away from her, he wouldn't be able to forgive himself for such a heartache. But if he didn't, he was bound for heartache if something happened to her…and he'd know who was responsible and why. No matter which choice he made, it was the wrong choice…because it wasn't even a choice.

"Damn that man," he sighed, and turned around.

-x-

Failure to synchronize with the Dummy Plug. That was the only way to sum it up. Not once or twice, but eight times, to boot. Nothing either Fusei or Ritsuko did seemed to work with Unit-01. And the worst part of it all was that the Dummy Plug they were using had Shinji's earlier synchronization data installed in it, and it worked well with Unit-02 and met a sufficient expectation with Unit-00 after an internal software upgrade was made.

"I want to say that Unit-01 isn't just a temperamental Eva," said Fusei to Ritsuko, "it's a finicky one, to boot. It seems that, no matter what we try, it won't accept the Dummy System into itself. It's like it knows there's not a real person inside it."

"Probably a reason it was deemed the Test-Type to begin with," added Ritsuko in agreement with her. "We should attempt to test the First Child with it and see what happens."

"Are you thinking if we should test Shinji with it?"

"No. It's probably best if we didn't. His synchronization with it has dropped substantially, so there's no telling if he could sync with it to an acceptable extent. Plus, because it refuses to sync with the Dummy System that has his data installed, then maybe…we shouldn't risk testing him with it."

"Professional decision…or personal?"

Ritsuko turned to face the younger woman with her in the room just outside the chamber with Unit-01, and could see that there was no fooling her with her logic.

"Personal," she answered her. "If it risks your son's safety, then it's always personal."

Fusei turned away from the faux-blond woman and expressed, "Thank you for your opinion."

"Don't mention it. The sooner we find out what's wrong, the sooner we can find a solution."

-x-

Misato was in a bind right now. It wasn't her head or arm injuries that irritated her, but the lack of communication from Kaji.

 _Where is that jerk when you need him?_ She wondered, looking down a hall that led to Terminal Dogma. _I wonder if Fusei had any problems like this when she was dating her boyfriend? Oh, who am I kidding? There's no way in Hell she had any of these problems when she was dating her boyfriend! He died shortly after Second Impact because of what the Ikaris did to him, her, and their son! There were no problems at all in their relationship!_

Turning a corner, the purple-haired strategist saw someone further down the hall enter a room. Following them, she discovered that it was none other than Kaji.

 _What the Hell is he doing?_ She wondered.

-x-

Being given the rest of the night off (and because Ritsuko claimed to have an idea on how to get Unit-01 to function with the Dummy System), Fusei, in her Prius, was trying to gather her thoughts as she drove to her apartment. But there was something in the back of her mind that kept her from thinking about the Dummy System…and thinking about Shinji.

 _But why am I thinking about him at a time like this?_ She wondered, turning a corner and approaching the parking lot in front of her building. _Huh?_

Sitting on the ground away from the parking spaces was Shinji, who seemed to be bothered by something. And it piqued her interests in why he was there.

"Shinji, what are you doing out here?" She asked him as she got out of her car.

Getting up, Shinji slowly met with her and said, "I got threatened with your life by one of the people that took me from you years ago."

"What?"

"That man, Commander Ikari. He threatened me with your life if I didn't stop talking to you."

Fusei couldn't believe this. Of all the things that could've gone wrong with the people her son was unknowingly or unwillingly involved with, this was a new level of wrong. Having her own life threatened by a guy that, alongside his dead wife, took her son from her…and then being informed by her son.

"Does anyone know you're here?" She asked him.

"No," he answered her. "I was on my way back to Misato's when he just showed up and said what he said to me and left. After that, I couldn't go back there. I came here and waited for you to show up."

Which, in Fusei's mind, mirrored something she used to do when she was little and her father was alive, waiting around for him to return home from work.

"Thank you for warning me, Shinji," she told him, and then held him.

-x-

 _…_ _There was something not right about Adam,_ thought Misato as she drove back to her apartment. _There's no way he looked like that when I first saw him. Something is off here._

Parking her Renault, she got out, got into the elevator and pressed the button for her level. If that giant in Terminal Dogma was the First Angel, she was curious to why NERV had it and what its role in this Instrumentality Project was. It was just another thing to add to the list of problems that existed at NERV, just like the not-so-current situation with the Third Child and his familiar ties and those he wasn't related to.

 _If the Eva's become a danger to the pilots, then Shinji shouldn't pilot Unit-01 at all,_ she thought, not wanting to put the boy in a dangerous position where it was either risk personal safety or the fate of the world from the Angels.

When the elevator stopped and reached her floor, she walked out to her apartment door and unlocked it.

"I'm home," she announced.

The sound of footsteps came and Misato saw Asuka, who seemed disappointed.

"Shinji didn't come back with you?" She asked her.

"No, I… You mean, he didn't come back after he left NERV?"

"Un-uh. He should've been back over an hour ago."

One thought came to Misato's mind seconds later when she found that Shinji wasn't here: Call Fusei to see if she had seen him. Taking out her phone, she dialed the number.

"Hello, Hitode residence," a female voice spoke up after answering the phone.

"Hello, Fusei, it's Misato speaking."

"Hello, Misato."

"Uh, look, the reason I'm calling is… Have you seen or heard from Shinji?"

"Yeah, he's with me right now. He had to inform of something very…troubling."

"Troubling? How troubling?"

"According to Shinji, that man in charge of NERV threatened him with my life if he didn't stop talking to me."

Misato couldn't believe this. She sympathized for Shinji; the boy had just gotten to building up his relationship with his mother…and Gendo Ikari was trying to tear them apart by threatening the kid with her life.

 _How depraved is this man?_ She wondered.

Since it was approaching the eleventh hour, it was decided that Shinji would stay at Fusei's until tomorrow, and it was hoped that everyone (really just those that were affected by the threat) would have a clearer state of mind.

"Well?" Asuka asked her, only knowing that Shinji was spending the night at his mother's.

"Commander Ikari threatened him earlier this evening," Misato explained.

"I didn't see that coming. The guy's a complete nutter."

-x-

It was strange to be in his mother's apartment for the first time. While Shinji had his suspicion that she was still trying to sort out, Fusei's place did feel welcoming…and had a lived-in sense of effort thrown into it.

"Um…" He heard her voice behind him as he stood in the living room area, and turned to face her. "Are you hungry, Shinji?"

"Um, yes. Uh, famished."

It was obvious to any sane person that both mother and son were embarrassed right now; Fusei because having Shinji in her apartment was unexpected after discovering that her own life was threatened…and Shinji because he didn't know what his mother did in her home.

-x-

Ritsuko had to give Fusei credit for her work on MAGI Balthasar. Whether or not it was because of her skill in coding or because of her sense of motherhood, the supercomputer portion that represented the original designer's mother aspect worked faster and more efficient than the scientist and woman aspects did. Unfortunately, though, just because Balthasar worked better than the rest of the trio of supercomputers, it did nothing to improve the goal of making Unit-01 work with a Dummy Plug, no matter how many attempts were made. She had made five additional attempts with the Dummy Plug with Shinji's synchronization data installed and two attempts with Rei's data, but the purple Eva simply refused to cooperate with her.

"Has there been any progress with the Dummy System?" She heard Commander Ikari's voice behind her in the room she was trying to test Unit-01 in.

"The Dummy System has made some results with Unit-00 and better results with Unit-02," she explained, turning to face the man, "but there has been no such results with Unit-01. Multiple Dummy Plugs have been tried with variations in the installed synchronization data of the First and Third Children, but the Eva has rejected each and every one of them."

Gendo's face remained the same.

"Then retest the Third Child with Unit-01," he ordered her.

"Sir, Unit-01 was involved in a battle with the most recent Angel and acquired its S² Engine in the aftermath," she informed him. "We've yet to test the First Child with the Eva. We simply have no usable data to show what could happen if we attempted synchronization with a living pilot."

"Then we shall see what could happen," he responded to her.

-x-

"Urgh…" Shinji, asleep on a spare futon in a room across the hall from his mother's, shuddered as he felt an unusual chill run down his spine as he turned onto his left side, his mother's Phoenix charm dangling from his hand.

To be continued…


	10. Cells and Circuitry, Life and Choice

Creation began on 05-30-17

Creation ended on 07-30-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Cells and Circuitry, Life and Choice

There was no denying that Fusei truly loved Genshi-teki…and still loved even after he died and fourteen years passed. Though he mainly survived through past memories and experiences carried by those that knew him deeply, sometimes Fusei's memories of her time spent with her sole love interest manifested in the form of dreams. Her mother and Genshi-teki's mother had deduced it was her brain's subconscious way of reminding her that he was the only man she really cared for romantically, even though more than half her dreams, she had confessed to them about, were of the embarrassing sort and they were random, sometimes just being of when they were in public and other times when they were not seen in public.

"…Aah…aah…aah…" Fusei moaned under her bed sheets, locked in an intense, memory-based about one of her more personal moments spent with her boyfriend.

Shinji, waking up because of her moans, wondered if this was something his mother experienced periodically. If so, then he was fortunate to have lived with Misato when he arrived at Tokyo-3 because he didn't know any other women besides her that made noises of this sort in their sleep.

 _But…she did say that the only man she was ever with was my father, this Genshi-teki Katagiri,_ he thought, willing to give Fusei the benefit of the doubt for her sleeping habits. _She does think about him a lot…and he was part of her reason for not giving up when she was looking for me._

Deciding to get up, Shinji slipped on his mother's Phoenix charm and redressed in his uniform clothes from the previous day.

Thud! He heard a crashing sound from her room.

"Omfph!" He heard her. "Huh?! Oh… Four-hundred-eighty-seven now."

Four-hundred-eighty-seven times she fell out of bed after an intense dream of her intimacy with Genshi-teki when she was younger, and two-hundred-ten times she had that particular dream.

Getting up and grabbing a bathrobe, she stepped out of her room where she found Shinji in the hallway.

"Good morning, Shinji," she greeted, embarrassed by the possibility of him hearing her as she slept like that. "Um, how are you?"

"Fine," he responded. "Are you okay? I heard a sound, like a small crash, coming from your room."

"Yeah, about that… I just fell out of bed, that's all. It's…past memories in the form of dreams."

"It's okay. Misato does something similar in her sleep. You get used to it after a while."

"Really?"

"Yeah. She probably still loves Mr. Kaji, but doesn't want to admit to it."

"Heh… Well, um, she should own up to it, eventually. Otherwise, she might regret it later. Breakfast?"

"Yes. Breakfast."

Shinji could guess that she was embarrassed to know that another woman with similar sleeping habits lived with her son…and that he had gotten used to it after a while. But he was really fine with it. This was his mother, after all…and he wanted to know as much as he could about her. Even with the threat on her life.

He noticed a picture on the kitchen windowsill that he hadn't noticed last night. It looked like a younger version of Fusei with a boy slightly older than herself, standing outside of a school building. The boy looked a bit similar to how he looked, but with more life in him.

"Um…is that him?" He asked her, pointing to the picture.

Fusei looked at the picture and nodded in the positive.

"Yeah," she answered him. "That's Genshi-teki. That's your father."

"He looks like he was very, very popular."

Fusei agreed with her son. Her boyfriend, while not someone that cared for great positions when it came to social status, was one of the best of men she had ever met.

-x-

Since it wasn't a school day, all the Eva pilots were required to be present at NERV.

"…We may have a problem today," Ritsuko informed Misato and Fusei when they walked onto the bridge in Central Dogma.

"I take it you were still unable to get Unit-01 to function with the Dummy System?" Fusei questioned.

"Worse than that. Commander Ikari returned and wants to test Shinji with it."

Misato and Fusei looked at each other before the latter woman spoke, "Before or after we continue with the Dummy System?"

"More along the lines of 'immediately', actually," Ritsuko explained. "I tried explaining to him what happened when the Eva was involved in the Angel attack and that we don't know what could happen if we tried to test it with a pilot, but he wants to see what could happen."

Fusei wanted to put her foot down on this decision and say that it was a risk that was unnecessary for NERV to take with the pilots…with the children…with her son. But she suspected that Gendo was up to something much worse than just wanting to see what could happen to a pilot that he had threatened just a few hours ago.

-x-

This was crazy, extreme and downright wrong. It was the only way Shinji could view what he had been instructed by Misato less than half an hour ago. He had to attempt synchronization with the Eva after repeated attempts at getting the Dummy System to work with it failed…and the technical personnel were uncertain of what might happen to a pilot because something had happened to the Eva during the last battle. As he slipped into his plugsuit, he worried about his mother being by herself in the presence of Commander Ikari…and what he might do to her.

 _Something just doesn't feel right about any of this,_ he thought, pressing the button on his wrist to fit the plugsuit to his body's proportions. _If they can't get the Eva to work with the autopilot system, what do they expect from me with my synchronization being so low?_

Meanwhile, in the ladies' locker room, Asuka and Rei had put on their plugsuits.

"I'm surprised you didn't volunteer to test Unit-01," Asuka told Rei.

"I did," the albino responded. "Commander Ikari said 'no'."

But Asuka got the feeling that there was more to it than simply being told 'no'.

"What do you think of Dr. Hitode?" She questioned. "She and Shinji get along well."

"Fraternizing with a pilot is frowned upon," Rei answered. "Doctor Hitode repeatedly breaks this rule by associating with Ikari-Kun…and Ikari-Kun is easily impressionable by playing at his most simple desires of wanting to belong."

"Coming from you, it sounds like you're jealous that he gets to have a relationship with his mother," Asuka told her.

"She is not his mother," Rei iterated. "As I said before, Ikari-Kun is easily impressionable by playing at his most simple desires of wanting to belong."

Right now, the redhead felt intimidated by the bluenette. In a way, it was like she were talking to Commander Ikari in a sense, like both had a problem with the truth that was being found out.

"He cares about her…and I've seen the DNA evidence that confirms their relation."

But Rei didn't accept this as a fact. Even if there was some sort of genetic relation between the Third Child and Dr. Hitode, it didn't change anything between what Commander Ikari thought…or what the First Child thought.

"Anyway, as much as I hated him, I want for Shinji to be able to walk away from all this with Dr. Hitode. She had been looking all over for him for fourteen years. The will and patience it took her to endure that length of time without him, and the constant hoping she must've held onto before she found him. I won't deny that I envy him for what he has that was just suddenly returned to him by a thread of fate, but I wouldn't try to play Gott and hurt Shinji just because he has his mother back and I don't."

As Asuka left out the room, Rei still felt that this was all nothing more than a mistake made by a crazy woman that joined NERV under a different reason that masked her true objective.

Even Commander Ikari refused to let anything as outlandish as DNA evidence or anything he did in the past change his opinion or beliefs.

-x-

The more she looked at Unit-01, the more she got chills from it. It wasn't its appearance as it was its behavior that had Fusei on edge. The bestial savagery it displayed without any synchronization on the part of the pilot, the way it blocked attempts to either activate the Dummy System or eject the Entry Plug, it was like trying to get a crazy, unstable, un-medicated person to cooperate with you, only they were stubborn and unyielding, like they had no reason to cooperate. And the more she thought of it, the more it made her worry about her son being in the pilot's seat.

"Damn it," she sighed, turning away.

"I take it that he wasn't willing to suspend the testing?" She turned to her right and saw Shinji standing on the bridge with her.

"With you, it wasn't up for discussion," she explained. "You do know that he's going to throw a wrench into the situation if he found out we were still talking."

"At this rate, nothing he does should frighten me, anymore. Not after last night. And…he can't really order me to stop talking to my own mother…just because he tells me to. That's crazy. I mean, it is crazy, isn't it?"

Fusei thought about it…and nodded that it was crazy.

"Yeah, it is," she responded. "We have every right to talk to one another, regardless of what others think or feel about us doing so."

It just reminded her that she was taking a risk all the time ever since she found him and discovered he was the baby she had been looking for. That every choice she made, it included him in some way.

"Hopefully, the synchronization test shouldn't take too long," he told her, smiling.

"Yeah, and afterward, we'll…go do something to forget about it," she agreed with him.

As they both walked away from the Eva, above them in an observation room, Gendo was silently furious at his order to the Third Child being completely ignored.

-x-

"…How is he doing?" Misato asked Ritsuko, looking at the screen with all three pilots present in their Evas, wanting to know if Shinji was fine.

"His synchronization with the Eva is below thirty-three percent," she answered her. "It's below acceptable parameters…so far."

"Anything else to be concerned about?"

Fusei checked the graphs showing Shinji's vitals and explained, "So far, everything's still green. Shinji hasn't…sprouted gills or grown horns yet."

If this was her attempt to be a little humorous to the personnel, Fusei was failing a little bit.

"Uh, Shinji, how are you feeling?" Ritsuko asked the boy inside Unit-01.

"Um…enclosed," he answered her. "A chill just went down my neck."

Fusei checked the internal temperature of the plug and noticed that it dropped seven degrees below the recommended temperature…and then another three degrees.

"The internal temperature just dropped by ten degrees," she informed them.

"Try to raise the temperature back up," Ritsuko told her.

"Delay that," they all heard Gendo tell them.

"Sir, if the plug's internal temperature lowers any further, he could develop hypothermia," Ritsuko told him, warning him of the risks that could endanger the pilots.

Fusei, however, because of her maternal instincts and moral judgment, wasn't going to follow that order, and typed in the computer codes to raise the plug's temperature back to tolerable levels.

"What are you doing, Hitode?" He questioned her.

"My job," she simply stated, watching the temperature graphs rise back up ten degrees.

"Lower the temperature back down," he ordered her.

"I'm afraid I can't do that."

Hyuga and Shigeru were surprised that a woman spoke back like that to Commander Ikari.

"Can't…or won't?" Gendo questioned.

"I won't," she answered him, and Hyuga and Shigeru silently gave her props for standing up to the boss. "It'd be a violation of the oath I took."

Even Misato hadn't been sure if she had the guts to stand up to Gendo like that.

"You're treading on very thin ice, Ms. Hitode," Gendo uttered.

"Sir, the synchronization has risen up by four percent," said Ritsuko, trying to diffuse the would-be situation that the man was starting.

On the monitors, all three pilots were able to see the control bridge and Gendo's unwavering attitude towards Fusei.

Shinji didn't like this at all.

 _The first chance I get, I should shove him,_ he thought.

Suddenly, the alarms went off again, indicating that another Angel was approaching.

 _Looks like we were saved by the Angel,_ thought Misato as Ritsuko put up the new threat on the screens. "What in the name of…"

Unfortunately, the Angel was present…but it wasn't anywhere near Tokyo-3. It wasn't even anywhere near Japan…or anywhere else on the planet! It was in space, between Earth and the moon.

"Just how big is this thing?" Shigeru asked.

"It's massive," said Hyuga. "Far bigger than the last one that tried to blow us up."

The Angel was a brightly-glowing creature that didn't resemble anything they were familiar with, but one thing about it that stood out was how it seemed to possess multiple branches of crystallized wings on its body, as though it were made of wings or crystal branches.

"Only Asuka and Rei's synchronization ratios are highest," said Ritsuko.

"Out of the two, who's higher?" Misato asked her.

"Asuka."

"We'll snipe the Angel before it can do anything."

"Send Unit-01 to intercept," Gendo ordered.

"But sir, the Third Child's synchronization is still too low," Ritsuko told him.

"Irrelevant."

-x-

The city was starting to become blanketed by heavy rain as Unit-01 arisen from the streets.

Shinji, despite the protests from Misato, Ritsuko and his mother, was still in the Entry Plug and about to use Unit-01 to arm a sniper rifle to intercept the Angel that remained in space. But he was okay with this order for now; if he could snipe the Angel before it could attack, then that would be it. It would be just another dead Angel. Nothing that would leave that man happy, but would ensure that everyone else would be able to live in a future without the threat it posed.

"Hey, Shinji," he heard Asuka say to him over the intercom. "Be careful, stupid."

"Yeah," he responded, waiting for the sniper systems to sync up with the trajectory of the Angel's current position in orbit.

Within Central Dogma, Misato, worried that Commander Ikari's decision to send Unit-01 out with Shinji was simply the wrong choice out of contempt and spite towards the developing relationship between the boy and his mother, leaned over Fusei's right shoulder and whispered something to her.

"The second it seems like he's in danger, pull him out," she whispered.

"Yes, ma'am," she responded. _Genshi-teki, please, watch over our son._

"Target will be within firing range in one minute and twenty seconds," said Hyuga to them.

"Units-00 and 02, standing by to backup Unit-01," went Rei, as she and Asuka were still in the catapults, awaiting launch orders.

Within the plug, Shinji clutched his mother's charm, finding solace in having it with him as he viewed the Angel through the sniping systems. In two more seconds, the Angel was within his scope and ready to be taken out.

"Target locked," he announced, prepared to fire.

FLASH! The purple Eva was suddenly bathed in a bright light…and people within hearing range heard the most horrific of screams.

"Aaaaaaaahhh!" Shinji screamed, feeling like he was being boiled alive by the Fifth Angel all over again, penetrated by sharp objects and ripped to pieces, all at once. "Aaaaaahh! Aaaaah!"

"What's going on?!" Misato demanded from Ritsuko. "What's with that light?!"

"It's some kind of variation of the Angel's AT-Field," the faux-blond explained. "I think it's attempting to examine the human mind."

"It's hurting him, that's what it's doing," Fusei expressed her opinion, typing in the command codes for the catapult beneath Unit-01 to retract the Eva.

On their screens, the bridge crew saw the purple Eva grab its head as the pilot continued to scream in untold, unmeasured agony. Then it moved away from the catapult, just as it retracted back into the ground, surprising them.

 _No!_ Fusei gasped. "Shinji, you have to get into the opening beside the Eva. You have to get out of the light right now."

"I can't!" Shinji yelled. "I can't get the Eva to move!"

She checked his synchronization…and it was now less than ten percent, way too low to get the Eva to move even an inch. Her son was just a vulnerable target in the metaphysical clutches of the Angel.

"Asuka, get him out of there!" Misato ordered the redhead.

Unit-02 launched from the catapult and into the city three feet away from Unit-01, and was bathed in the light. Unlike her fellow pilot, Asuka just felt the memories of her painful past trying to resurface.

"It feels like this Angel's trying to violate my mind!" She shouted, approaching the purple Eva. "Sorry, Shinji, but you'll thank me later for this!"

She relieved Unit-01 of the positron rifle and disconnected the umbilical cable, kicking it into the hole beside it, out of the light.

-x-

The Angel had only seen a past full of pain in its first target and an equally-painful past in its second target that got rid of the first target. It nearly had gained some measure of understanding with the first target, understanding words like "neglect", "abandonment", "mother" and "disgust", even if such an understanding came at the expense of the target's life. Except now it had to make do with the mind of the girl, which was different from the first, more unstable, more chaotic than the hurt and mending mind of the boy. Images of loneliness, manipulation, even grief were explored by the Angel…until…

PIERCE! Something red shot from the blue sphere that was the Earth…and penetrated the Angel's AT-Field, putting an end to its assault for good.

The last thing it ever saw in the girl's mind…was a scene between the boy and another woman that was with him. A happy scene.

-x-

Shinji, feeling like he had experienced his first hangover from drinking too much alcohol, awoke to the white ceiling of the trauma ward and wondered what happened. The last thing he recalled was seeing the Angel, but then…nothing.

"You're finally awake," he heard someone say to him, though his hearing was a little off so he couldn't make out just who the voice belonged to until he turned to face them.

At first, he was expecting to see Ayanami again like before. Instead, he was greeted by Fusei, who looked restless from a lack of sleep.

"Doc…" He almost went professional in his response. "M…Mother."

"You had me worried for a while," she told him. "You were unconscious for eight hours."

"Eight…eight hours? The Angel?"

"Miss Ayanami defeated it when Ms. Soryu was unable to."

"Are they alright?"

"Miss Soryu came to an hour ago and described what happened from her perspective. Do you remember what happened to you when you were bathed in that Angel's beam of light?"

Shinji tried to think back to what he had experienced, but could only describe it as immense suffering.

"I felt like I was being boiled alive, impaled by sharp objects and ripped to pieces, all at the same time," he explained his experience. "It was many times worse than with the first sortie against the Fifth Angel. A lot worse. Oh?"

He noticed that his left hand was gripping something and opened it up, revealing his mother's Phoenix charm, still contained in its plastic wrapping to keep the LCL out.

"Doctor Akagi said you held onto that with such force, the doctors were afraid of tearing your fingers off," Fusei explained to him.

"It was the only thing that made piloting the Eva tolerable for me this time," he confessed. "Even after what happened to me in the most recent battle. Though, it wasn't much of a battle."

"No," she agreed with him, "it wasn't."

Then, just because of a random thought in his head, Shinji looked away from Fusei and towards the door to the room, seeing Commander Ikari with a cold frown. Before he could say anything, though, the man walked away.

"I just saw the lunatic," he told her.

"He's been more cold and incorrigible than ever before," she explained. "He actually revealed the truth of our relation to the entire bridge when he demanded that you be sent back out against the Angel…and I told him that you were in no condition to go back out there."

Although he was surprised to hear this, he made no expression of shock. He only ever told Kensuke one other thing, and that was to explain how he was not related to the Ikaris in the slightest degree. He feared what could happen if the whole of NERV found out the truth and didn't want to risk losing his real family and being by himself again.

"You mean…everyone knows now?" He questioned.

She nodded in the positive.

"How likely are rumors of this going to spread?" He asked.

"Between what he said…and how I responded…a lot of people are going to be wondering exactly what is going on."

Shinji reached out to her left hand with his right hand and grasped it.

"Who do you suspect they'll believe more?" He wanted to know from her. "Him…or you?"

"The one with the most credibility is the one that people choose to believe the most," she answered him; blood may have been thicker than water, but only the truth would set them free from the cruel and corrupted web of lies.

"What credibility does a man like him have?" He expressed.

-x-

 _Decisions and Consequences_

 _"Send the Third Child back out there,"_ Gendo had ordered the bridge while Rei had gone to retrieve the Spear of Longinus to dispose of the Angel.

" _Sir, he only has a ten percent synchronization,"_ Fusei had told him. _"What's more, he was just psychologically assaulted. He'd just be a target."_

" _He'd still be useful to distract the Angel!"_ Gendo shouted.

" _Well, I'm sorry,"_ she responded, not truly sympathetic to his belief. _"He's not going back out there until he's recovered."_

" _So says the delusional woman that thinks she's the Third Child's mother."_

Everyone within an earshot of what Gendo said found themselves confused by what he said.

" _If you want to take me on and question whether or not this is the truth, fine, Gendo,"_ Fusei responded. _"I will take this as far as you want to go. Until then, sit down, shut up and back off."_

Most would've probably paid to see a showdown between Gendo and whoever was brave enough (or foolish enough) to go up against him. Others would've probably killed to see it. But Misato and Ritsuko, they would've argued over who was superior: Their superior…or the recent employee, both with a connection to the Third Child. One with a legitimate link, the other a false link.

One thing was fairly certain as Gendo, who rose from his seat, sat back down as Rei resurfaced with the Spear of Longinus to take out the Angel, and it was if there was going to be fight between this man and this woman, it was bound to be epic in its own way.

-x-

"…Man, this is messed up," Shigeru expressed, looking at the DNA results Ritsuko showed him and Hyuga after they demanded an explanation for why Commander Ikari said what he said and why Dr. Hitode didn't seem surprised. "How did nobody know this? How did nobody bring this up?"

"It explains why it's hard to compare the two of them," said Hyuga, unable to disbelieve this. "There's no way to compare them to begin with. Still…it's quite the shocker."

"What is?" Misato, who was in the lab with them, asked. "That Shinji's mother is still alive and came to find him…or that she went and stood up to the commander?"

"Both," Hyuga and Shigeru answered.

"If these two have a showdown, it's going to be epic," Shigeru expressed.

 _Why does everyone here think they're going to have an epic battle?_ Ritsuko wondered, unsure how any type of battle between Gendo and Fusei was to be considered epic. _It's not even like he can fight fair when he'd rather use foul methods to end a situation in his favor. I should know, he's done so many times before._

"The hand that should've rocked the cradle is the hand that should've ruled the world," went Misato. "I hope that Fusei lives to walk away from this with Shinji."

 _Though, I doubt that anyone ever rocked Shinji to sleep when he was a baby,_ thought Ritsuko, but decided that if there was to be a fight, she would have to root for Fusei, who gave her some advice on how to deal with her strained relationship with her mother.

" _If you and she were of similar goals, would she really not consider your personal feelings over her own interests?"_ Fusei had asked her. _"Mothers are supposed to be understanding to their children and have a positive influence on their behavior. I'm sure she loved you…even if she didn't say it or show it like she was supposed to. If you think you live in her shadow, then get out of her shadow. Do something you want, something that people will remember you for. My mother was a masseuse, and my sister and I pursued different careers."_

-x-

"…Hey, idiot," Shinji looked up from the book he was reading and saw Asuka in hospital garments. "They're keeping you here tonight, too?"

"Yeah," he answered her. "Their MRI machine is down, and they say I need to have my head scanned, just in case of the attack on my mind left any side-effects."

"Your mother told me the same thing."

"How long until it's fixed?"

"Should be ready by tomorrow afternoon."

"We could've done this at a regular hospital."

"That's what I said, too."

Shinji closed his book and set it down, allowing Asuka to see the title of what he was reading.

"Didn't realize you were into those cheesy stories," she told him, seeing that he was reading an old book called _Looking for Home_.

"I just found it one day at a library when they were throwing out their old books," he explained. "I never finished it, but it's a really good book so far."

"You're such a simple person."

-x-

Rei Ayanami never said anything, but if anyone was able to see it clearly enough, they'd know that she was clearly pissed. The defeat of the Angel using the Spear of Longinus did nothing to change the fact that Shinji still spent time with that Hitode woman. It made her very disgusted, even as she was attending her appointment with Dr. Akagi, that the boy smiled for a woman he'd never seen before, and shouldn't have had any attachment towards.

"What's gotten you in a mood, Rei?" Ritsuko asked her, sticking her in the left arm with a syringe and drawing blood.

"I think you know," she responded, surprising the faux-blond with her choice of words with which to respond. "Ikari-Kun, despite orders from Commander Ikari to stay away from Dr. Hitode, still spends time with her. His fraternization with her breeds only potential instability. Her fraternization with him breeds only disaster and encourages continued disregard for protocols."

"That sounds a lot like jealousy, coming from you," Ritsuko told her, extracting the needle from her and giving her a cotton swab to staunch the blood flow. "Since everyone here is starting to spread rumors and only some of them have come to me for clarification on the truth, there's no point in hiding behind half-truths. Fusei Hitode and Shinji are related by blood, the boy's real father died when he was only three days old, he was taken from his mother by the Ikaris, as far as anyone can determine, and one can't deny that the fourteen-year gap between mother and son has been bridged to a degree after their reunion. Shinji does care about her and wants to be with her."

"It isn't right," Rei said. "Ikari-Kun is easily impressionable and influenced by others that appeal to his desire to belong."

"Which sounds just like jealousy. I thought Commander Ikari had your undivided attention, not Shinji."

"Isn't that the same for you, Dr. Akagi?"

Ritsuko thought about it…and answered, despite there being some truth to it, "Not anymore."

Maybe it was because of Fusei, but Ritsuko couldn't deny that for a moment, she wanted to strangle Rei, right then and there and make it look like a suicide. The girl looked so much like his wife, which aided in the confusion of why she said Unit-01 was angry. She was probably the only one to realize that Fusei's presence and her influence on Shinji was driving a wedge between Gendo, his wife and the First Child, resulting in an instability within Unit-01 because Shinji was unable to address the soul inside it as his mother, who really wasn't, and it infuriated them that the woman wasn't dead as they had believed her to be.

"We're done for the day," she told Rei, and the girl got up to leave. "A word of advice, Rei."

The albino stopped and turned to face the faux-blond.

"Just because they don't accept that he and his mother are building their relationship, it doesn't mean you have to agree with them. Shinji loves her and deserves to be with her, no matter how illogical or odd other people see it. If I hadn't met Fusei, I would've looked the other way if it involved Shinji. But things have changed. A lot has changed. A hidden secret was uncovered."

Rei then left the room.

Ritsuko got the feeling that Rei was impervious to this revelation that was getting around faster than the fear of the measles and flu virus did in earlier years.

"Excuse us, Dr. Akagi," she heard a man say to her as he and two women came in. "We're sorry, but we had to know the truth. Is Dr. Hitode really the Third Child's mother?"

And again, the curious ones come seeking clarification on the rumors.

-x-

Again, SEELE was upset with Gendo for his actions. It wasn't just the fact that he had used the Spear of Longinus to defeat the Angel without their authority, but the fact that he had, more or less, threatened Dr. Hitode after sending the Third Child out against the enemy when he had a low synchronization with the Eva and tried to send him back out there when the woman defended her child against facing the Angel a second time. Somehow, they found out about the incident and decided that enough was enough with Gendo if he couldn't follow the simplest orders.

" _If his synchronization is below usable parameters, Ikari, then you had no right to send him out there to begin with, useless or not,"_ SEELE 04 told him. _"And the Spear of Longinus has entered lunar orbit. Recovery is impossible."_

While Gendo claimed that they had no other means to dispose of the Angel, none of the Committee accepted his excuse.

" _We've decided to send the Fifth Child to replace the Third Child,"_ SEELE 01 announced to Gendo. _"And there's something else you should know. He's coming to question this personal matter you have caused. Do make him feel welcomed."_

This, of course, had Gendo wondering why someone like…this man would bother with this matter. Unless he was told about it and desired an explanation for why the problem existed and was instigated with intention.

-x-

An old picture was all he really had of his family from before Second Impact. It was his reminder of how life back then was more…subtle…and before the subtlety was undone by choices that were better thought of than performed. In it were his wife, himself and their two daughters, the eldest of whom followed the path of a homemaker while the youngest chose the path of science.

 _If I had known they were going to get in this much trouble over a choice one of them made, I would dragged them both back home by their heads and make them fix their mistake through legal channels,_ he thought, sitting on a plane and looking out at the water below, now looking at a different photo. _I can't believe that you would do something like this, Yui. What the Hell were you thinking?_

The photo depicted an older Yui Ikari, holding a baby boy in her arms. It never crossed her father's mind that the boy wasn't really his daughter's. He felt disgraced by Yui, that she had disrespected their family by committing this vile act that was her second mistake in her life; her first was marrying that Gendo Rokubungi who was just bad road. But even after discovering that she didn't really have a son, that he was someone else's child, he couldn't bring himself to destroy the picture.

 _My family has disgraced and disrespected another family beyond any reasonable measure of doubt,_ he thought, putting the photo away. _This isn't about what drove them to do the cruel things they did to people that did them no wrong. This…is about rectifying the problem they made and seeing that the ones responsible are punished for their actions._

This was simply how the aged man felt towards the last of his family after this discovery was brought to his attention…and he wouldn't forgive them or be allowed to go quietly to his grave without ensuring some form of closure was gained.

-x-

"…We'll be ready to begin the MRI scan momentarily, Ms. Soryu," said Fusei to Asuka the next day after the required machine was fixed.

"Alright, just get it over with," the redhead responded, laying inside the repaired machine.

It was all because of a simple coin toss that Shinji and Asuka decided who would get their head scanned first. Because Asuka called tails, she won and got scanned. Even though he had been exposed first and probably got it worse, Shinji decided to be a gentleman and let the redhead go first.

Fusei couldn't fault him for being a gentleman. It was something she wanted to believe his father would've done, too, when he was alive. In fact, as memory serves her, it was something he had done something like this when he was still alive.

"Ohh…" She groaned, feeling the subtle discomfort from the small pins in her left leg.

"Are you okay?" Shinji asked her, noticing that she was rubbing her leg.

"Yeah, it's just a subtle pain that comes and goes every now and then. You?"

"I'm feeling fine for now."

They both looked at the MRI machine and Asuka.

"Asuka, you do realize that you're allowed to speak during your scan so long as you don't move," Fusei told her.

"What is there to talk about?" Asuka asked her.

"Life?"

"That's everything."

"What you intend to do after the Angels are dealt with?" Shinji suggested.

"Isn't that obvious? Pursue Mr. Kaji."

Mother and son looked at one another and the son merely gestured that the girl was obsessed with the unshaven man that was once Misato's old flame.

"Best of luck to you, Ms. Soryu," Fusei told her, checking her head scan. "Well, based on your scan, there's no apparent harm to your brain that can be seen. No damages or signs of tumors. I'd say that for the time being until your next scan, you're in the clear, Ms. Soryu. But if you find yourself seeing or hearing things you know you shouldn't, you'd best inform someone."

"Danke," Asuka said to her, but then realized that she probably didn't know a word of German. "Thank you, Dr. Hitode."

"You're welcome. Bitte."

"When did you start speaking German?" Shinji asked her.

"I never learned a day in my life. Thankfully, there's a service tool online called Google Translate. People that want to know how to pronounce words in different languages use that, even if the translation isn't perfect."

As Asuka got out of the machine, Shinji accepted her explanation and left the room to get into the machine; he was hoping that his head scan would be just as normal as Asuka's had been. There were times, just small periods of random thoughts based on what NERV did that revolved around using teenagers in the Evas, where he had to wonder how safe it was for them to spend various hours within a cybernetic construct made to fight the Angels. They might've done this with Asuka and Ayanami for years and months, respectively, but history has come to show that people, due to the fact that everyone was different from one another, react to things differently than others do. His concern, which he had shared with his mother, was that the LCL smelled constantly like blood; while he tried to question this with Dr. Akagi once, she shot him down, saying that it was all in his head. Except it didn't feel like it was in his head, not when he smelled it every time he was in the Eva…and it bothered him to have no answer for why.

"We'll begin in two minutes, Shinji," his mother told him as he lay down in the platform.

"Okay," he responded.

-x-

"…So, your younger daughter's boyfriend was named Genshi-teki Katagiri?" Fuyutsuki asked Mrs. Hitode, pointing to young man in the photo that was with Fusei.

"That's right," she answered him, pouring herself another cup of sake. "He was two years older than her, but they got along faster than I did when I was still dating my husband."

Fuyutsuki looked down at the photo again on the living room table. It was taken at a beach near Tokyo, and the young couple were near the water. The young Fusei was wearing a dark blue one-piece with a white trim around the neck area and a lighter green skirt piece, while her boyfriend was wearing blue trunks and goggles; even at such a young age, the elder was able to see a lot of Shinji in the two people that would eventually become his parents.

"Did he have any family? Before Fusei and Shinji?" He asked her.

"His parents and younger brother, Tetsuo," she explained. "He and Fusei were best friends since they met in elementary. Tetsuo was the one that introduced her to his brother. It was love at first sight…even though it was most likely unexpected and unintended. You can't fight against who you find yourself becoming attracted to…so long as the feeling is mutual."

"But…they didn't get married?"

"They were going to after Shinji was born. Even though it meant he'd be illegitimate, that would only be temporary; as long as they both recognized Shinji as being their child while they were still a couple that had every intention to get married, that would change his illegitimacy to legitimacy, even though his father was going to marry into our family."

Fuyutsuki found this to be the only similarity between the Hitodes and the Ikaris, but the men that married into these respective families had different reasons for doing so.

Fusei's boyfriend loved the girl and had no hidden agenda or a history of being unlikable by others.

Yui's husband sought to replace the unseen and ancient force he called God and had a history of being unlikable by various people during college, and Fuyutsuki had nothing but apathy and pity for him, knowing that he was beyond forgiveness.

"Mister Fuyutsuki?" Fusei's mother asked.

"I'm sorry," he responded. "Just old memories. Fifteen years worth of sadness."

"You said you saw Shinji as a toddler, right?" She asked him. "What was he like back then?"

"Full of life and happiness. Again, it never occurred to me that he wasn't my former student's son. I used to admire her research theories when I was a professor at Kyoto University. Ever since I found out the truth, I'm not sure how to see her."

"If she was unable to have children of her own, then desperation breeds unforeseen actions that lead to unexpected consequences."

"But…I don't know if she was unable to have children of her own. I never tried to bring up her reason for dating her husband after she explained her reason."

"Did you ever wish you should've?"

"Only recently."

She sighed and looked at another picture of her younger daughter and her boyfriend. It had been taken a week before Second Impact happened. The pair had been at this late-night dance party…where Fusei and Genshi-teki most likely went and sparked the flame that was Shinji afterwards.

"You once mentioned that Fusei had gotten injured prior to her son's birth," Fuyutsuki expressed. "How did she get hurt?"

"One of the buildings in what was left of Tokyo had become unstable. An earthquake came and it fell over…along with sixteen other buildings. We were in one of them and had to evacuate. She lost her footing going down a flight of stairs and Genshi-teki caught her before she could fall. But the banister he grabbed came off and they fell almost two floors to the ground. Genshi-teki hit the ground first…and broke most of Fusei's fall. Her leg got broken in three places and his abdominal cavity was ruptured from the impact. It was a miracle he was still conscious because my eldest daughter swears she saw him hitting the remaining banisters before he hit the ground."

"I'm sorry."

"We were able to get to the hospital, but it was overwhelmed by the refugees and understaffed because of the aftermath. All they could do for my daughter and her boyfriend was put her leg in a sling and wrap his sides in bandages. Even when most were taken care of, the hospital was still in shambles. Fusei was one of eight women that had children being born at the time, but she was the last one to deliver because her doctor believed she was overdue."

"What did you think?"

"I thought Shinji would decide when he was due…and he did just that, two days after Fusei had pins in her leg to straighten the bones as they mended back together."

-x-

"You just have some minor swelling on the right side of your brain, but it should go down in a few days," Fusei informed Shinji of his head scan after he was done. "If you feel any pain or find yourself unable to sleep or relax for a few days, I'll scan your head again and see if the swelling persist…and we'll go from there."

"You mean, operate?" He asked her.

"Only if it comes to that."

"Thank you."

Then, mostly because she heard his cries of pain in the Eva and it made her concerned for his welfare, she held his left hand.

"Are you…feeling shaky?" She asked him.

"No, ma'am," he answered.

"Chills?"

"No. What about you?"

"I've been tense ever since I said what I said to that man on the bridge in Central Dogma. I might've given too much into my maternal instincts just to sound intimidating."

"He should be intimidated now. He's not a scary person, anymore."

"Hey, I'm not scary."

"But what's that saying that means not to infuriate a mother? Something about Hell without fury?"

"You mean, _'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'_. Yes, I am a woman, but I don't fit the criteria for being scorned. But I fit the criteria for two things that I refuse to pretend didn't happen: I am a mother…and I have been disgraced by an unforgivable crime."

Shinji nodded in agreement on that.

"Say, are you free tonight?" He asked her.

"I have an open schedule, why?"

"Misato and Asuka suggested once that I invite you over for dinner."

"If you think you can handle me there, I'm game."

-x-

Rumors started spreading across the base like a virus, and Gendo had no control of what the people were saying to who, where, when or why. It got to the point of infuriating when he returned to his office and found _"BABY SNATCHER"_ spray-painted on his door in bright yellow.

 _That little bitch,_ he thought as he wished Fusei was disposed of.

It was like the woman was aiming to bring him down and take over (even though he knew that wasn't true), but he had other plans for dealing with her and the Third Child. There was no way he was going to lose everything he had sacrificed so much on just to watch a pathetic doctor and computer expert walk away with her bastard child.

 _I'm the one in control here, regardless of personal views and opinions,_ he thought, sitting at his desk. _I will be rid of any problems that interfere with my scenario._

-x-

Fusei stood outside of Misato's apartment and hesitated before ringing the doorbell. She wasn't worried about anything, but rather nervous. This was the first time she had been to the commanding officer's home where her son lived…and she really just wanted to make a good impression.

Ring! She pressed the doorbell and waited for a response.

The door slid open and revealed Asuka.

"Hello," she greeted the redhead.

"Welcome," the girl responded, stepping aside so she could enter the residence. "Your son's nervous about this."

"Nervous? Shinji, too? I'm surprised that he's nervous."

"Well, he did invite you for dinner. I don't know why he'd worry about his mother being over for dinner going bad."

"Even the slightest degree of embarrassment isn't so bad."

"Well, beware of Misato, for she's good at that."

Fusei stepped in and removed her coat.

As the door slid closed, neither woman was aware of the fact that they had been watched from a distance by an albino girl with blue hair and red eyes…and a temperament.

"This must be Pen-Pen," Fusei said as she looked down at the penguin that came out of the second refrigerator she noticed. "Hello, there."

Pen-Pen looked up at her…and immediately took a liking to her. She felt just like the boy that fed him better than his owner did.

"Squawk," he went.

"I guess he likes you," Asuka said, leading her to the living room, passing a door that had a sign reading, _"Shinji's Lovely Suite"_.

 _Eh-heh,_ Fusei mentally chuckled at the sign.

In the kitchen, Shinji was finishing up dinner for everyone when he heard his mother's voice; she was speaking with Misato in the living room.

"…Knowing Shinji, he's going to cook something delicious," he heard Misato say; he was thankful that she wasn't drinking right now, but he got the feeling that his mother knew enough about the signs of alcoholism when she met with the commanding officer.

"I know my primary medical practice has been in pediatrics, but I've studied the altered chemistry of the human liver," he heard Fusei say to her. "Some people, such as yourself, Ms. Katsuragi, have developed enzymes that fight against the defects of alcohol for longer periods. You'll most likely have to be close to fifty or past eighty before you feel what drinking over fifty gallons of it could do to regular people."

"Really? Whoa… Thank you…and for the record, I had to limit my alcohol intake after the Unit-03 incident. Even before that, the situation involving the Sixth Angel gave me stress."

"Stress? The Angels? You? I thought it was that ex of yours that gave you stress."

"Kaji? No, he doesn't give me stress. He gives me headaches with his behavior."

"Just so that you know, if he tries to hit on me again, I will not hesitate to devastate."

"Oh, I think after you tasered him the first time and with the revelation of your relation to Shinji being public knowledge, he knows better than to hit on a single mother with a Taser."

"Thank you again for looking after Shinji."

"Don't mention it. He really looks after Asuka and I."

Shinji finished the primary dish and cut up the salad side dish before going into the living room.

"Dinner is ready," he announced.

-x-

As she walked back to her apartment, Rei Ayanami looked less antisocial and more angry, like any wrong move made by those around her would set her off. She had followed the Hitode woman to Major Katsuragi's apartment and felt more anger towards her for getting closer to Ikari-Kun…and wanted her to stop…permanently.

 _Fusei Hitode… There is a price to pay for your arrogance,_ she thought, deciding to take this matter into her own hands. _You are no longer necessary. You are no longer useful._

If only she knew that not to long ago, she heard and repeated those cold words to someone else before.

To be continued…

A/N: Uh-oh, just how messed up do you suspect Rei to be because of Gendo and the revelation of the nonexistent blood ties? At first, I thought of having Shinji losing his sense of taste due to the Angel attack on him, but decided against that since something a bit worse is bound to happen later.


	11. Jealousy and Betrayal, Hate and Desire

Creation began on 07-30-17

Creation ended on 09-25-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Jealousy and Betrayal, Hate and Desire

Fusei walked to her car and sighed before she got inside it. This was the second time she had dinner with her son…and it was nice. Sure, his guardian was a woman that had to cut back on her beer intake, was his commanding officer and they didn't get along in the beginning, but she gave both individuals the benefit of the doubt. Nobody is ever perfect, not even a woman of her status…and perfection is just another flaw.

 _Still,_ she thought as she drove away, _things could have gone better or worse than what they are. I'm relieved that they didn't get any worse._

Then, just because she felt she needed to, she looked up at the rear view mirror and noticed a Sedan behind her…and became curious; they weren't common around this city…and Section Two was the only group that used them. She wasn't even eight blocks away from her apartment and this had to start up her concerns as an adult.

 _Let's see how this plays out,_ she thought, turning left on the road when the traffic lights were green.

To her disgust, the Sedan followed her. So once she drove down three blocks, she turned right to see if it would do so again.

 _You son of a bitch,_ Fusei frowned upon the fact that she was now convinced she was being tailed by a Section Two Sedan, likely setup by Gendo. _Surely, there are ways to settle this subtly and without the need for such unnecessary actions._

Unfortunately, she had to assume that Gendo (or anyone like him, for that matter) was not into subtlety and actually preferred methods of these sorts if it meant removing whoever or whatever he perceived to be a threat to himself. This meant that even when she had no plans of her own on how to deal with him properly and just spend time with her son, he would rather have her dealt with to ensure that she couldn't deal with him at all.

-x-

For once, Misato was quite impressed by Shinji insisting that she go return Fusei's cellphone to her after discovering that she left it on her way out. Since the woman needed her phone, it was necessary for her to have it in case of an emergency.

 _And she's on the other side of the city?_ She thought, driving to a stoplight.

Suddenly, a dark blue Prius, identical to the one owned by the Hitode woman, drove down the other street in front of Misato's Renault, followed by a black Sedan that seemed to be tailing it.

"Huh?!" She gasped, deciding to follow the cars. "If she had her phone, I'd ask if that was her."

-x-

The place was probably the worst part of the city, but Fusei had no time to complain about it. At least the heavy construction had ended hours earlier in the day as she drove behind a crane and turned off the engine.

 _Now I'm hungry again,_ she thought as she took out her Taser gun. _Try and get me, you security thugs._

A short while came and went before she saw the Sedan drive past her, and as much as she wanted to sigh a breath of relief, she felt she couldn't just yet. Then another car drove by, a blue Renault with a few dents and scrapes.

 _Misato?_ She wondered, seeing the Renault stop a few feet away and the driver's side door open up to reveal its owner stepping out. _What is she doing out here?_

She then got out of her car and slowly came out of hiding.

"What are you doing out here?" She asked Misato.

"I could ask the same of you," the purple-haired woman countered. "You left your phone when you left, and Shinji insisted that I make sure you get it back in case of an emergency."

Misato handed over the iPhone.

"Thank you," Fusei praised her. "I think I was being followed by Section Two."

"They're the only ones that drive Sedans," Misato informed. "But why follow you? What purpose does that serve? Their primary priority is just to keep watch over the children."

"Primarily, meaning they're capable of other decisions that don't include such a responsibility. I assume they were doing so because of Gendo."

"You really think he would go that far?"

"With him, like anyone else alive, he's capable of anything if he feels he can…and he does not like that everyone now knows the truth…even if it is in various shades."

"Or he's definitely afraid of really having to fight you. More than half the base already feels that a showdown between you two is bound to be epic."

"Epic? Really? I'd rather assault him through legal actions than to punch his face in."

Smash! Something shattered near Misato's legs, startling the two women.

Fusei looked down at what was broken…and it was a…saucer plate.

 _What the heck?_ She thought.

Smash! Something else shattered near her legs this time, and they both saw that it was a pair of bowls.

Misato looked up and saw somebody throwing down things.

"Hey!" She yelled at them. "What's the big idea?!"

But as Fusei looked up and got a good look at the assailant, she pulled Misato away just in time to avoid the next plate.

"Does Rei Ayanami live around here?" She asked her.

"What? Yeah, she lives around here. Why?"

"It was her throwing plates and bowls at us."

"What?! Are you sure?"

Smash! A bowl was thrown down and it smashed the front window of Misato's Renault.

"Aaah!" Misato gasped.

"Get in your car and drive to my place," Fusei told her, and ran back to her Prius.

-x-

Watching as the Renault and Prius drove away, Rei looked as irritable as Asuka did most of the time, only her irritation was directed at the Hitode woman. Her goal to remove her was being thrown off…and now she would have to take more drastic measures.

 _She is unnecessary,_ she thought, almost fuming over her insufficient aim, which prevented her from hitting the woman's head. _She is no further use, anymore._

-x-

They reached Fusei's building and Misato got out of her car to face Fusei.

"You're sure that was Rei throwing plates and bowls at us?" She asked her.

"Blue hair, chalky skin," Fusei described their would-be attacker. "Is there anyone else fitting such a description belonging to her?"

"But four floors above us? And at night?"

"I'm told I got my father's sight."

"Okay. Although I disbelieve in the possibility of Rei attacking us with…with kitchenware… Just tell me why she would do something like that?"

"If I knew more about her, I'd probably have an answer. I'll be honest, but Ms. Ayanami's background records are completely bogus, and I say this only because I've dealt with incomplete files before. Miss Soryu and Mr. Aida have the most complete records out of the children, Shinji's are only half-true, but Ms. Ayanami's are more-or-less absent from records. No date of birth, no blood type classification, no list of a medical history, no fingerprints, not even background names of any relatives or next of kin. It's like she doesn't even exist."

It was among the coldest of truths, and Misato knew it. Even when she should've been curious about the lack of information regarding Rei, she up and overlooked it. Mainly, because it was either Ritsuko…or Commander Ikari that seemed to know more about Rei than anyone else did. Out of all the pilots, the First Child was the only one who was the enigma among them.

"I should press Ritsuko to tell me everything she knows about Rei," she told Fusei.

"Will she even divulge?"

"I'll make her divulge if I have to."

-x-

As he walked off the plane and into the airport, the last patriarch of the Ikari sighed as he looked around himself, seeing very few people that would actually want to come to Tokyo-3.

"What a pity," he told himself, "but at least the taxi service is still in business."

He pulled his roll-along suitcase with him to the front of the building to hail a taxi to get him and take him to a hotel.

-x-

"…Ayanami?" Shinji responded to Misato's revelation of her and Fusei's minor encounter with the albino girl when she returned home. "But…why would she attack you two?"

It was natural for Shinji to be unsure of who he thought he knew did what (or tried to do what) to who somewhere else, but to hear that Rei Ayanami actually threw dishware at his mother was something he had some difficulty believing.

"I didn't get a good look at the culprit, but your mother did," Misato explained, "and she was certain that it was Rei. She's the only person we know that lives in that area."

"So, First actually threw dishes at y'all?" Asuka questioned. "What would make her do something as crazy as that?"

But then the redhead thought back to the last time she actually spoke with the albino…and suspected something that might've added up to the reason.

"She doesn't believe Fusei's your mother," she explained, "that she's playing at your desires to belong."

"But…that's crazy," Shinji responded. "She must've seen the DNA comparisons and everything. She has to know that there's no lying going on here."

"Either she knows or doesn't know," went Misato, "or simply refuses to accept the truth. Ritsuko's told and showed over a quarter of the base personnel the DNA matches and those people have told others. It's beyond a doubt that by now, the whole base knows the truth. So, Rei must be disbelieving of it of her own volition."

 _Or maybe because Commander Ikari told her to disbelieve the truth,_ thought Asuka.

But Shinji still had his doubts on why Rei would…deliberately…attack his mother like that. Even though he hadn't known her for so long since he arrived in Tokyo-3, he'd not known her to attack anyone, regardless of whether or not she was attacked, verbally or physically.

-x-

The next day at the base, Gendo, in his office, received a phone call from Ritsuko.

"Yes, what is it?" He asked her.

"He's here now, sir," Ritsuko informed.

"Alright, bring him in."

"Yes, sir."

He hung up and returned to his brooding over the printouts of the DNA comparisons on his desk. Suddenly, the door to his office opened and two people stepped inside.

Ritsuko Akagi and Gendo's father-in-law stopped in front of his desk.

"Shojiki Ikari, sir," she introduced.

"You're dismissed," Gendo told her, and she left the room. "You look well."

"And you're as unruly as ever," the man, Shojiki, responded. "Do you have any idea of the ramifications this discovery has caused? The disgrace it has made worse?"

"Nobody was supposed to know about this."

"You knew. Yui knew. I never pictured either of you capable of such an unforgivable act. You didn't even try to do things legally, did you?"

"Everything was still unstable…"

"The Hell with unstable, Gendo. It doesn't even matter to me why you and Yui did what you did, it disgusts me that I had to find out like this. That I had to be informed that a young man I've never even met isn't really my daughter's son, that she…and her…disgraceful embarrassment of a husband…just go and steal someone else's baby."

"We thought she was dead. She should've been dead."

"No, you wanted to believe that she was dead. So now, I ask…what have you done so far to rectify your crime?"

"The situation will be dealt with in due time."

"You're either going to settle this morally, legally and professionally…or just cover up one crime with another crime…and that will not do."

"It is futile to settle with legal action."

"If you can't deal with this the right way, you only prove that I was right about you from the very beginning. You are completely irresponsible and egotistical. You, my daughters, all three of you have disgraced the Ikari name with your misbegotten behavior. Disgrace, dishonor, devastation. Don't even waste your breath. I'm dealing with the matter myself."

"No, you stay out of this," Gendo told him.

 _Like I'd ever listen to the likes of you,_ he thought. "Or else what? You'll kill me? You and I both know what would happen if you so much as tried to do that."

And as much as Gendo hated his father-in-law (and the feeling was more than mutual), he knew that anything that would indicate a hit on Shojiki Ikari would result in a harsher penalty than what he could've expected from his current situation with the Third Child…and the Hitode woman.

"Unlike you, I don't have an axe to grind with anyone I don't like for selfish reasons," Shojiki expressed; this was a hard truth, since he demonstrated no cruelty towards others, whether he liked them or despised them…and refused to give mistreatment to those that did nothing wrong to him or others. "I will resolve this troubling matter myself. You do…what you're only known for doing. Try and practice some decency."

He then turned and vacated the office, leaving Gendo to fume over being told to stand aside.

When he was gone, Ritsuko returned.

"I take it that went well," she spoke.

-x-

"…Are you alright?" Shinji asked Fusei as he found her in the medical ward.

"Yes, I'm fine," she answered him, setting down a pack of surgical gloves in a cabinet. "How are you?"

"Trying not to believe that Ayanami did what I was told she did last night…until I've confronted her about it, that is."

Fusei didn't put much thought into such a possibility, but was wondering if Shinji had some degree of attraction towards the albino girl. This…and her previous encounter with Rei…made her worry that she was putting Shinji into a difficult position between the two of them, which she hadn't considered; she had been so focused on trying to find him that she didn't think much about how he was handling the situation of their relationship taken in by others. She was willing to handle it with Gendo (and whoever helped him and his wife to take Shinji), so she should've been just as willing to help her son with the girl if he needed.

"I'm sorry about this all, Shinji," she apologized to him.

"Sorry for what?" He asked her. "You didn't know. How could you have known? Even I didn't know. You…you can't predict everyone's actions and reactions. That's impossible. Don't be sorry. I'm glad that you're here."

"Ikari-Kun," they both turned and looked at the entrance to the room, seeing the albino girl, but were surprised by the look of her eyes. "Why are you here?"

It wasn't like she put on contact lenses or had dark circles under them. No, it was like they were full of some degree of disgust or resentment…or malice, even. It was as though…Rei Ayanami was full of hatred…towards Fusei…just for being around Shinji.

"Ayanami," he spoke. "I was about to come find you…"

"Why are you here?" She asked again, cutting him off, and then pointed towards Fusei. "Talking to her? Why is she here?"

This was new from Rei. She was never this direct before. It was…disturbing.

"I'm within my rights to talk to her if I choose to, Ayanami," Shinji defended. "And she does work here, helping to keep us alive."

"She will eventually become unnecessary, of no use to anyone."

He wasn't even sure why, but Shinji felt like the girl had threatened his mother, just like how Commander Ikari had threatened her in front of him.

"I'm sorry, Ayanami…but was that a threat?" He asked her, feeling like he was supposed to be upset.

"No," she answered him. "It's a warning."

As she walked away, Shinji sighed as he placed his right hand on his chest, just over his heart. He never thought he could feel like he wanted to throttle the girl that he didn't want to believe had thrown dishes at his mother and Misato last night. He didn't want to believe that she had been capable of such an attempt…but now he couldn't deny the possibility…and he wanted to know why.

"I'll be right back," he told Fusei and went after Ayanami.

-x-

"…So, whenever he's not looking, people give him the evil eye?" Asuka asked Kaji, who was informing her of one of the newer results of the revelation of Commander Ikari's non-paternal relation with the Third Child and Dr. Hitode's maternal relation.

"It's certainly adding into the fact that he's not a well-liked person," the unshaven man explained. "If anything, this makes Shinji a pitiable young man whose mother is trying to get back in his life."

"That baka's mother's gonna have a bull's-eye painted on her back if that man's pushed over the edge."

 _You don't know the half of it, Asuka,_ Kaji thought, fearing for the Hitode woman. _The sooner this thing with the Angels is over, the sooner she and Shinji can get outta here._

As they entered the Eva cages, they stopped walking due to the presence of a man that stood in front of Unit-01, looking up at the purple behemoth.

"Who is that?" Asuka asked Kaji.

"Never met him before," he responded.

The guy was old, but still fit enough to walk around, his graying, ebony hair doing nothing much to cast doubts about his stability. But the expression on his face was that of contorted disgust.

"So many years," they heard him utter. "Too many years…and too many people suffering because of the both of you. It's terrifying to comprehend. But then again, I doubt that you had any clarity in your conscience that was morality. And for what? What was it all for?"

He then walked away, and the two walked over to where he stood previously in front of Unit-01.

"What's going on here?" Asuka questioned.

"Who knows for sure?" Kaji spoke.

-x-

"…Ayanami!" Shinji called out to the albino girl as she walked out onto the NERV garden. "I want to know the truth! Did you do what they say you did last night?"

The girl turned to face him…and it was the first time ever that Shinji saw how her expression change to one of contempt, mirroring the expression of Commander Ikari.

"Who says I did what last night?" She asked him.

He was momentarily caught off guard by her, but stood his ground in front of her.

"Misato told me that you threw dishes at her and Dr. Hitode," he told her. "You…tried to hit one or both of them. Did you do so?"

The First Child's only thought of the Third Child trying to confirm for himself what happened last night…was how much she despised the woman who came in between them and threatened to take him away when the Angels were all defeated. And there was no way she could allow the boy to leave, no matter what happened…even when she herself didn't know the reason to why.

"And suppose that I did?" She uttered to him. "Doctor Hitode is becoming unnecessary to NERV. Her presence here will eventually be of no use to anyone."

It wasn't so much how she said it, but the way she said it, like she was echoing how someone else said something disturbingly similar about someone else…and she picked up on it.

"She's my mother, Ayanami," he told her, pretty much confirming that she did do what Misato said she did last night. "She's my mother…and she did nothing wrong to anyone to warrant some sort of outrage against her. You gave me a warning…and now I'm giving you one: Don't cross lines you can't uncross that will drive more than a wedge between people. I don't want to see something cruel happen to good people that don't deserve pain."

Then, as he walked away, Rei felt crossed by Shinji telling her, in a small way, not to do anything towards the Hitode woman. And she knew that this was something that couldn't be handled subtly. No, this was one that needed to be handled…with brutal certainty.

"Everything happens as it must," she told herself; she wasn't sure why, but those words seemed to echo someone else who used them.

-x-

"Shojiki Ikari?" Misato questioned Ritsuko, being informed of the mystery man along with Asuka and Kaji; Fusei and Shinji were elsewhere in the base.

"Yeah," the faux-blond explained; while she wasn't ordered to withhold information regarding Shojiki, she wasn't going to hide such information from the others now, either. "He's Commander Ikari's father-in-law. From what I could ascertain, he found out about the situation regarding Shinji and is here to rectify it."

"I'm sorry, rectify?" Asuka spoke; she got the feeling that such a word had a completely different meaning than what it normally meant.

"Apparently, Commander Ikari is unable or unwilling to resolve the matter with Ms. Hitode legally, so Shojiki is here to do it."

"I wonder how that will turn out?" Kaji suspected.

"Maybe he'll want to talk to Fusei first," Misato suggested.

Suddenly, the alarms went off and they got the feeling that such a possible meeting between the two was likely going to have to wait until later.

"Can't we ever get a break that lasts longer than just a few days?" Asuka requested. "How many Angels are left now?"

"After the most recent Angel attack," Ritsuko revealed, "there should be only two left."

"That's generous to know," Kaji told them. "After this, only one will remain."

"Not all that generous. Our current combat roster is one pilot and Eva short."

There was no way that Shinji was getting back in Unit-01 after the last battle. And the use of the Dummy System was unlikely to work on the purple behemoth if it refused to fall in line.

-x-

"…I'm not so keen on what's mentioned about angels," said Shinji as he stood on the bridge with Fusei and the rest of Central Dogma, looking at the latest Angel, "but why does this Angel seem like it's part of something much bigger than itself?"

"Because it looks like a giant halo, Shinji," Fusei informed him; the woman had done her homework a long time ago about angels and what they often looked like in the eyes of others. "The previous Angel resembled large wings, similar to the wings of an angel from certain religious beliefs."

"Messengers of God?" He questioned.

"Yes."

"This is weird right now. Why are these Angels starting to…look like they're pieces of traditional angels all of the sudden?"

The Bridge Bunnies and most of the rest of the command center got curious about why the remaining Angels started to look the way they were instead of as strange monsters.

The strategy was thus: Units-00 and 02 were to eliminate the Angel before it could reach the city. Unit-01 was officially on suspension since Shinji's synchronization with it was now in the leagues of useless, and Gendo had no choice but to accept this.

"Who's taking point?" Shinji asked Misato.

"Asuka is," she answered him.

Just outside the city limits, the floating, ring-like Angel did nothing more than be an eyesore. But unlike the previous Angel, it hadn't done anything unexpected yet.

Suddenly, the Angel collapsed onto itself, solidifying the light it emanated, and broke apart into a string-like form, propelling towards Unit-00!

Pierce! It attached to the blue Eva and caused vein-like protrusions to form under its armored hide.

The Eva grabbed the other end of the target and used its rifle to shoot it.

Bang! Bang! The rifle fired, but the Angel continued to persist without so much as a scratch.

"Asuka, quick!" Misato shouted.

The red Eva ran over to the blue Eva, but the other end of the Angel expanded into eight ends and almost grabbed the red Eva.

"Whoa!" Asuka gasped, dodging the ends and backing away.

She tried to shoot at it again with the rifle, but the bullets bounced off wherever they hit or missed completely. There was no way bullets were going to work on this Angel.

"Any alternatives? I'm open to alternatives!" Asuka shouted.

"We're sending you the Dual Saw," Misato responded, and a section of the street opened up to reveal a large weapon with the NERV logo on it.

-x-

Rei found herself in a vast place that seemed to be made of LCL. In front of her was someone that looked exactly like herself, standing a feet above the large pool of LCL she was in, but her hair obscured her face.

"Do you wish to unite with me," the lookalike Rei asked.

"No," Rei responded, but then realized something that she hadn't noticed before: The face that had been obscured by the hair was no longer obscured.

The Rei above the LCL was really her…and the one in it was the lookalike.

"Are you the Angel?" She asked the lookalike in the LCL.

"Angel? Am I of the ones you call Angels? Yes, I am." The girl answered her. "You are angry at her."

"Angry? Her? What do you mean?"

Around them, the dark orange surroundings shifted into images of Fusei Hitode. The woman's interactions with none other than the Third Child made the albino girl displeased.

"You're angry," the Angel reiterated to her. "Your anger is directed at this person…who has been trying to find her child for many years, ever since he was taken from her."

"She is not his mother!" Rei raised her voice. "What everyone says about her being so is nothing more than a falsehood!"

"Even when there is proof of their blood ties to one another? Even though the evidence is incontrovertible, you choose to disregard what has been expressed as the truth? Why is that?"

Even Rei found herself unable to respond to the question she was asked. All she knew was that she didn't like the woman for being around the boy, for being the center of attention in his mind. Oh, how it infuriated her. Oh, how it made her feel sick and disgusted by their relationship.

"Ikari-Kun's mother is deceased," Rei declared her belief, "and if this woman continues to make her claim at being his mother, then I'll make sure she's deceased, too."

"You would take his mother from him, just like that?" The Angel asked her.

"I would."

"Out of hatred towards her?"

"Yes."

"Knowing that you would be hurting the boy by doing so?"

Rei thought about Shinji, how he would feel if he lost the Hitode woman, but decided that she would've done so, regardless of his reactions to the outcome.

"Everything happens as it must," she declared.

"So, you would hurt him by doing this?"

"Yes."

-x-

Asuka found this Angel to be the most bizarre enemy to mankind so far. Not only was it able to penetrate the AT-Field of an Eva, it was able to take control of the Dual Saw and use it against Unit-02. Right now, she wouldn't have minded a little backup from another Eva.

 _If you're going to do something, Wonder Girl, I would suggest that you do it now,_ she thought, having to jump out of the way from the Dual Saw again for the sixth time.

Within the Geo-Front, Shinji was a little tempted to go against the order and try to pilot the Eva to help the girls, but knew that by the time he would eventually get out there, the situation would likely just escalate further out of control.

-x-

"Why do you want to hurt him by removing his mother from his life?" The Angel asked Rei, as veins formed under her plugsuit and on her face.

"She threatens to take him away," she answered, "and he will choose to go with her instead of stay."

"Yet, it is his right to choose whether or not to be with her, regardless of the opinions of others."

"Not when he has a role to fulfill later on. Until then, he has no say in what he does."

"Yet, because he has free will, which is considered a double-edged sword because it serves us as much as it stands to defy others, he can decide whether or not he has a say in all that he does, no matter who disagrees with him. You, nor anyone else, can make his decisions for him and expect him to simply agree with the outcome."

"I will show you," Rei told the Angel, "and then you will die."

-x-

"…Asuka, quick," Misato ordered the pilot of Unit-02. "Return to base. We're going to use an N² bomb against this Angel."

When Unit-02 jumped out of the way of the Dual Saw for the tenth time because of the Angel, the enemy released the weapon and was retracting into Unit-00.

"Misato, what's going on?" Asuka asked the purple-haired woman.

"Ritsuko!" Misato demanded.

"The bio-fusion between the Angel and Unit-00…is progressing too fast…and the AT-Field is suppressed," the faux-blond revealed.

On the displays, the blue Eva began bulging out in his torso and limbs, dents and cracks and veiny protrusions forming all over it.

"Unit-00's self-destruct sequence has been activated," uttered Maya, now worried about Rei. "The core has begun deteriorating."

Before Misato (or even Gendo, for that matter) could order Rei to evacuate the Eva, the back of the blue behemoth burst open and shot out the Entry Plug.

"Asuka, expand your AT-Field to full power!" The purple-haired woman ordered; NERV had to try to contain as much of the explosion that was to come as possible to minimize the potential damage to the city, even if it seemed impossible.

Unit-02 got back up and spread its arms out as its AT-Field was expanded.

BLAST! The blue Eva self-destructed, taking the Angel with it along with as much of everything else around it as it could.

The entire city was bathed in blinding light as it covered all

Shinji and Fusei covered their eyes to shield their vision.

When the light died down, the end result was a large, smoldering hole in the ground that exposed much of the Geo-Front to the world, a singed city that looked like it had experienced second-degree burns on many of the skyscrapers, and a partially-singed Unit-02, having fallen to its back due to the intensity of the explosion. But fortunately, the damaged had been minimized by the red behemoth, and the city was stand standing.

"The Angel…has been terminated," said Maya to the rest of Central Dogma, bothered by what happened. "Blue pattern is gone."

"And…what of the Eva?" Misato questioned.

"Unit-00…is also gone."

"What about…the pilot?" Ritsuko asked her.

"The First Child escaped from the explosion," she answered.

-x-

It was a bold move on her part, but Rei had to defeat the Angel by any means necessary, which included sacrificing Unit-00. Even if it meant being unable to continue fighting the Angels, this would enable her to do something else with her time, such as keeping tabs on Shinji and Fusei. She would go to extremes to ensure that they were separated from one another, no matter what.

 _I will separate the two, even if it means one of them suffers an accident,_ she thought, losing consciousness; it would be a matter of time before she was rescued by NERV.

-x-

"Are you alright, Asuka?" Shinji asked the redhead as he saw her in the hall on her way to the women's locker room.

"As okay as one can be," she stated, "considering that the First Child up and detonated her Eva, defeating the penultimate Angel, while nearly destroying the city and rendering everyone in it homeless. What was she thinking?"

"Whatever she had to do to stop the Angel."

"Except she did so without warning, and without even being ordered to. I mean, she's all…all…"

"All what, Asuka?"

Asuka then expressed, "The girl's all creepy more than half the time."

Shinji then responded, "She's only creepy when she didn't show emotion on her face…but lately, she has been…unpleasant to talk to. And then, there's her dislike of my mother."

"Yeah, she's been very uptight about Ms. Hitode, like she feels threatened by her or something."

"Threatened by her? She hasn't exactly threatened anyone beyond Mr. Kaji when he tried to hit on her and she tazed him…and that man. There's no reason for her to threaten Ayanami."

"Someone should tell her that before she does something that is beyond herself."

Shinji sighed and stated that he gave Rei a warning of not to cross lines she couldn't uncross…and Asuka was surprised to hear this.

"You think she did it?" She asked him.

"Well, she didn't exactly broadcast her guilt…but yes. Yes, I think she did. And after what she said about my mother… She has left me bothered by her behavior towards others."

"What did she say?"

"That she's becoming unnecessary…and will eventually be of no use to anyone."

Asuka thought on those choice of words used by the albino girl…and couldn't help but feel like they were something only a sadistic or megalomaniac person would say. But she didn't tell Shinji this; she felt he had more than enough things of his own to worry about.

-x-

"…We've found the plug! Over here by the trees!" Rei heard a voice yell out as she came to.

The sound of the emergency hatch being pried open as her vision cleared up was heard and she had to cover her eyes with her left hand due to someone shining a light on her face.

"The First Child is alive!" Someone else revealed.

Outside of the plug, a perimeter was setup and the group of NERV personnel present were in hazmat suits and carrying sub-machine guns.

Ritsuko was also present as the First Child was being extracted from the plug. This was going to be a problem that Gendo was going to get on her case about now that they were down to just one working Evangelion and one pilot.

"Orders, Dr. Akagi?" One of the men asked her.

"Take the First Child back to base for a seventy-two-hour psych evaluation," she told him.

As the girl was being moved away from the plug on a stretcher, the faux-blond saw her face…and mentally reeled back from her expression of rage. It was really disturbing to see her exhibit any emotion of the sort.

 _Why do I get the feeling that Fusei's been marked by the girl?_ She thought.

-x-

Shojiki looked around the small, medical storage space as he waited for Ms. Hitode to show up, seeing how less than half the money funding NERV seemed to be spent on barely helping the people rather than being more helpful, even if they didn't know.

 _NERV's no better than GEHIRN was when they started out,_ he sighed as he looked at the way the medical supplies were organized. _At least whoever did this has more sense._

"Excuse me, sir," he heard a woman's voice behind him. "Are you Shojiki Ikari?"

He turned around and saw Ms. Hitode…and nodded that he was whom she was asking.

"Miss Hitode?" He spoke.

"Fusei," she uttered her name. "You…requested to see me earlier?"

"I did."

It felt strange to be meeting with the actual mother of the boy he had never met that he had been duped into believing was his grandson, but Shojiki could see in her a kindness and warmth that he wouldn't have seen in other women that went down the road to maternity, even if it either rarely showed or was being shown recently.

"I guess you've heard by now that I am Gendo's father-in-law," he explained to her.

"Yes, I have," she responded, deciding to sit down on the nearby stool in front of the man, "but I don't know what this has to do with me, sir."

"It's not something I'm proud of myself. Not with a man like him, anyway. Recently, it came to my attention that he…and one of my daughters, his wife, committed a crime against you over fourteen years ago…and why they did so."

Knowing why would help to clarify for Fusei their crime against her family, against Genshi-teki, all of them that suffered such a loss that hurt more emotionally than any physical blow could.

As he sat down on the stool opposite of her across the room, Shojiki sighed again.

"I guess it all started with a car accident Yui and I were in twenty years ago," he expressed. "We were both, more or less, injured, but nothing that was fatal. Just a broken leg for myself and non-fatal impalement for her in the abdominal cavity. But then the doctor that removed the car pieces and small rebar that impaled Yui informed us both that she suffered some injury to her uterus."

"Any degree of injury to that part of the female body would make having children difficult, if not impossible," Fusei stated, "depending on the extremity of such an injury."

"In her case, it was so-so as the younger generations would come to define such things that are neither very good or very bad. But I guess for Yui, it was just bad to discover. Nobody even suggested that she try to find out if she could still have children of her own. I think that's why she and her husband did what they did to you. She feared the possibility that she couldn't."

Fusei sighed and uttered, "Except she did have other options available to her. If she couldn't do it, there were… But it probably wouldn't have been the same to her had she did so."

"I'm a guy, so I can't really comprehend how a woman truly feels when such a revelation hits, only that it makes them feel bad."

"Grief, sir. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I've been down that road myself. I've lost my father and my boyfriend. I thought I've never find my son or know what became of him. Some of these losses I could accept…but others were losses I couldn't just yet."

"Still, it wasn't right for them to do what they did to you and your son. Worse than that, they didn't even bother to check and see if you were truly dead before they took him, according to Gendo."

"They…they thought I was dead?"

"Yes."

"Growing up, people that know me say that I am so quiet at night that I am considered a dead sleeper. Even the sounds of city traffic roaring throughout the night wouldn't wake me."

Still, it wasn't something she was proud of, and it was only because she felt that she needed to get up that third day of being a mother to feed her Shinji was how she saw him being taken away.

"It's still their fault," Shojiki stated; no matter what faults this woman might've had, past, present or future, they didn't do her any justice for losing her son for fourteen years. "If they didn't check your pulse, it's still First-Degree Kidnapping. Even if you were dead, it'd be the same crime because he wasn't theirs to take, and their crime is punishable by either life in prison or the death penalty."

"I've seen enough of the results of premature death to know that any more deaths would be a breaking point. Life behind bars is a death sentence enough, in and of itself."

"Is it really?"

"Knowing that you're going to jail and never getting out, you might as well be dead. And it keeps other people from committing similar acts that are worse than what had been committed in the past by them."

"What…what could be worse than what has been done already?"

-x-

"…With Unit-00 destroyed, we're down to just Unit-02 and Asuka," Misato told herself as she walked down the hall to the infirmary to see the status of Rei. "And with one Angel remaining, this will all be over in due time."

And in truth, she would be relieved when this was all over. The sooner this all ended, the sooner NERV could be disbanded…and the Evas dissembled…and that thing in Terminal Dogma that she was certain wasn't Adam could be properly disposed of before it did something that was worse than Second Impact. And Shinji could walk away from all this with his mother and see the rest of his family and actually have a life.

 _Kami knows he deserves happiness after what he's been through,_ she thought.

Stopping outside the door to the room that the First Child was assigned to, the tactician saw Ritsuko walking down the opposite way, looking concerned about something.

"Hey, Rits," she greeted.

"Misato," she responded. "Pray that the last Angel comes soon so that Ms. Hitode and her son can leave this place."

"Why?"

"Commander Ikari. Because Unit-00 is gone, he's considering making Rei pilot Unit-01, even though it's suspended from active duty."

"What is his deal with trying to reinstate Unit-01? It didn't respond to Rei the last time she was in it and the Dummy System couldn't be implemented."

"Would you believe in favoritism?"

"That's crazy."

"It's not like Shinji's going to get in it again. I mean, we still don't know what the ramifications of what could happen to anyone in it now that it has an S² Engine."

 _And there's no way in Hell I'll volunteer him for the role of the Guinea pig,_ she thought. "Well, how is Rei doing after the latest battle?"

"Well, physically, she's recovering from Angel's intrusion," the faux-blond answered her, "but mentally, I'm not so sure."

"If she's still the same from before, I could deal with that…to a degree. But due to last night, I still don't know her deal was."

"I fear even I don't want to know what goes on in her brain."

In the room, strapped down to the bed as a precaution, Rei, staring at the ceiling, thought of only two things that she felt were her big priorities. One was keeping Shinji away from Dr. Hitode. And the other was to make sure the Hitode woman became so unnecessary that she would be nothing more than a forgotten memory of no concern to anyone.

 _Get rid of the Hitode woman…and everything falls into place,_ she thought, balding her hands into fists. _Remove her from the equation…and Ikari-Kun will do as he's told._

She imagined a vision of Shinji with Dr. Hitode in front of her. They were just talking and the boy was smiling at the woman. She never heard what they were saying (if they were saying anything of any significance), but the way that the boy reacted each time, smiling or laughing while the woman just looked at him happily, like his happiness was all that mattered to her. If anything, this just made the albino girl even more resentful of the woman and wanted her gone…for good.

-x-

"…Well, Mr. Ikari," went Fusei to Shojiki as they both stepped out of the storage room, "I thank you for your time. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day."

"I'll be honest, Ms. Hitode, after everything that has happened…and what has yet to happen," Shojiki uttered, "I hope the rest of my day is enjoyable. Yours, as well."

It was quite a conversation between the two. For Fusei, it was meeting a man who was disappointed in his daughters and son-in-law beyond a reasonable doubt for their actions, hurt to know that a boy he hadn't met in person wasn't his grandson, and was willing to do the least amount of harm to atone for his family's sins and mistakes. And for Shojiki, he got to meet the real deal behind the boy he wanted to at least see be returned to his actual roots, no matter what anyone else thought or said about him.

"Mother," Shojiki heard someone say behind him and turned around, seeing Fusei with a young man of fourteen years of age talking to her. "How have you been?"

"Fine, Shinji," she addressed. "Yourself?"

"Good. Good."

Shojiki resumed walking away from the scene; he might've never met the young man in his youth, but he didn't want to tarnish perception of the Ikaris any further by letting him think that he was similar to Gendo, whom he was going to have words with later on.

"Who was that guy?" Shinji asked Fusei, noticing Shojiki as he left.

"Just a new friend here to resolve a matter that needed his attention," she stated as simply as she could.

-x-

Even if Unit-00 was no longer around (and he wouldn't dare try to exploit the out-of-service Unit-03, even if there was a chance that it was now devoid of any Angel influence), Gendo remained confident that Unit-01 would suffice in his plans. Once the final Angel was dealt with, the ultimate goal of mankind could be implemented.

"Well, I'm pleased to say that the situation you and Yui caused is halfway resolved," he heard his father-in-law say to him as he walked into his office. "I've had quite the conversation with Ms. Hitode. Even though her resources were limited in finding her son and she had to get her education, salvage other parts of her life and everything, she still had something of immense value that you lack, Gendo, that you don't seem to take seriously."

"Is that so?" He responded.

"I could tell you, but I doubt you would understand. Anyway, I would say that I was willing to pay the woman for the years she had to worry about whether or not her son was doing fine, but money doesn't solve everything wrong with the world. She and I both agreed on something that needs to happen, but only after this situation with the Angels has been resolved completely, and that problem…is everyone responsible for the crime committed against her family…which would, of course, be only you."

Gendo raised his head up slightly, as though he'd been threatened by Shojiki just now.

"It doesn't matter if you weren't completely in the loop on what happened," Shojiki explained. "You still helped Yui to take Shinji from his mother. In this day and age, even back all those years when half the world went to Hell, Fusei had every right to keep her kid…even if she was only fourteen, didn't know how the world works and had a friendly boyfriend that was willing to marry her after their son was born and they had recovered from their own injuries. When all the Angels have been dealt with…you're going to be locked away for the rest of your life, Gendo. I've already filed all that was discovered about this matter with the authorities, so whatever affairs you have left, I suggest you use your grace period to put them in order."

Now Gendo felt really crossed by his father-in-law! The fact that he wasn't the one that decided to take the Third Child didn't matter to anyone that knew the truth to a degree, but the fact that he was still an accomplice and the only one still alive meant that the same consequences applied to him! First-Degree Kidnapping, Custodial Interference, and any other charges that could be put on him all led to the same penalty, which was life without parole!

"You can't do this to me," he told Shojiki.

"I just did," Shojiki responded, and then turned to leave his office.

-x-

Although a little singed, the city still had some life in it. But that didn't lift Shinji's spirits when he found out the next day that some people were considering leaving after word got out that one of NERV's Evangelions had self-destructed and was indirectly responsible for the damages done. Of course, he couldn't blame them for wanting to leave; if something of this sort had happened and he were a simple civilian, he'd want to leave the city, too.

 _It feels weird, spending the time I usually spend in the Eva out here,_ he thought as he walked down the street, seeing some people spraying the sides of the buildings with water hoses to wash the soot off them. _It's been so long, I've forgotten what I used to do with my free time._

It had only been a few months since his fourteenth birthday, but even that was too long to have forgotten how to just waste his time at places like a library or an underground arcade. Now, the matter that NERV was involved in was going to end soon, and he could go back to that regular part of his life…and rebuild his life, too. He'd be able to get to know more about his mother, his father, see his aunt, his grandmother. He was really looking forward to such a reunion.

"Hey, Shinji!" He heard someone call out to him, and saw Toji running up the street towards him. "I'm glad I found you before I had to leave!"

"Leave?"

"That last attack nearly caused the hospital to come falling down," the school jock explained. "My sister's being transferred to a hospital over in the Chiba Prefecture. I'm going with her so that she's not alone over there."

"Is she doing okay?" He asked her.

"Her left leg is still mending, but she's doing well. What about you?"

"With some luck, things at NERV will be over soon."

"That's great to hear. Hopefully, I'll see you around."

The jock then ran off, leaving him alone on the sidewalk.

 _I hope this all ends soon,_ Shinji thought, wanting to be done with NERV as soon as possible. _The sooner the last Angel shows up, the sooner this chapter can be closed._

-x-

Standing in front of Unit-01, Gendo, fuming with rage over this recent discovery that once the last Angel was disposed of, he would spend the rest of his life in a prison cell somewhere for helping his wife take someone's child. It didn't even help his situation to know that SEELE weren't going to do anything about this, as this was beneath their list of concerns that involved him.

 _First the woman shows up and confirms that the Third Child is her bastard son,_ he thought, reaching into his right pants pocket and pulling something out, _then Fuyutsuki escapes from custody, and now this nonsense your father has revealed that threatens to condemn me for the rest of my life. Not unless I rush the progress of the Instrumentality Project. Now that the Spear of Longinus has been disposed of, nothing and nobody can come between us, Yui._

In his right hand was a small case that he opened up, revealing the regenerated body of Adam. If this was to be his grace period to get his affairs in order, then he would exploit this period of time to get closer to his objective. There was no way in Hell he was going to rot in a jail cell for his involvement in a kidnapping charge. Not as long as he had something to say about it.

-x-

Lake Ashi seemed to look less tranquil than it was supposed to be right now. Even Asuka found the lake to be unable to quell her disappointment in finding out that Hikari was leaving the city after the last attack because of the explosion caused by Rei.

"So, all our friends are leaving the city?" She asked Shinji, who was with her just to view the lake.

"Everyone except Kensuke," he explained.

"Except he's on the mend, so what's the point of him being around? Also, Unit-03 is suspended from duty, so he can't pilot it."

"I doubt that man will even permit him to be evacuated."

"Good luck to you and your mother after this is over," she told him.

"Thanks," he praised her. "What are you going to do after this is over?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't think I could ever go home, though."

"Home? You mean, Germany?"

"Yeah. It hasn't really been…home for a long time."

"But…you still have seasons there, right? There's…snow and brown leaves?"

"Those don't exactly make it home. The people there… I don't feel close to them. My step-parents and I… There isn't much to say. After my mother died, let's just say that I don't deal very well with relationships that involved her."

"Maybe if things get better, you can come back here."

"Why? You heard me complain about you Japanese. You live in cramped spaces, your sliding doors don't have locks, and don't get me started on your monetary system."

"But…there are people here you know, right?"

Asuka sighed and realized that he was right about that. Despite disliking Japan due to its perpetual summertime, it had a handful of people that she did know…and put up with her crap to a degree.

"You remember that question your mother asked me regarding the Eva?" She asked him.

"What you feel when you're inside the Eva?" He responded.

"Yeah."

"What was it that you felt when you were in it?"

"That I had to make sure that the people of this city have something to come back to after every attack, that nobody gets hurt because of me."

"And…what do you feel now that you're out of it and may never get back in it?"

"Honestly…I feel…relieved to be out of the Eva."

"Relieved? Why?"

"It's not something that I wanted to be committed to. It's not even something that I would ever view as a job of sorts that anyone should do forever."

"You know how I feel?"

"Bitter?"

"That there won't be any recognition for those that were involved in the matter regarding the Angels. This all falls into obscurity, like it all never happened."

"Would that be a bad thing if it did get forgotten about?"

"You're a simple person. You wouldn't mind it at all. But the world should know who was involved and what they went through during the whole thing."

"Well, maybe the UN will give the NERV personnel pensions for their services and awards."

"Oh, really?"

"I mean, it is a possibility."

The redhead returned her gaze to the lake.

"What about you? Your aftermath?" She asked him.

"Aftermath?"

"Well, you found out that you were taken from your mother when you were a baby, so that's defined as an unpleasant discovery. Commander Ikari will likely be facing jail time for that. What will you do when you meet the rest of your real relatives?"

"Rebuild my life, one day at a time," he answered her; he really couldn't answer any other way than that. "See what's out there for me beyond this."

"I hope that you at least grow up happy after this is over."

Shinji looked out at the lake and had to admit that it was nice to hear Asuka say that to him.

-x-

Rei had managed to get free from the restraints on the bed and was now wandering the halls of the infirmary and found the Fourth Child in his room.

"Oh, hey, Rei," Kensuke greeted her, but then noticed her expression was one of contempt. "Uh, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she responded. "I just need to know one thing: Is Dr. Hitode still here?"

"Uh… I don't really know. You see, she came by earlier after you were found after the battle with the Angel, and that was just to check my leg. Afterward, I think she left."

"Is that so? A pity."

Kensuke was bothered by Rei now. He'd never known her to ask for the whereabouts of anyone…and he'd never known her to use the word "pity" before, either.

"Should you see her again, could you give her a message for me?" She asked him.

"Yes, of course," he told her.

When the girl gave him the message, he soon wished he hadn't heard those words she used in front of him at all.

-x-

It felt like a cool night, but the tension seemed anything but. Rather than go home just yet, Fusei stopped by the park where she first met Shinji when she showed up in the city. Even though Asuka had prevented its destruction, it didn't feel as welcoming to her as it had been once before. She guessed it was because things were reaching a head and nearing their conclusion faster than ever.

"Of all the people this could've happened to, it had to be the both of us, Genshi-teki," she sighed as she sat on the bench she spoke with Shinji on when they first met. "The two people responsible have been reduced to just one person, and that man will spend the rest of his life rotting away in jail when this madness is all over. I'm being called out by a fourteen-year-old girl I don't even know, but instead of finding myself worrying about that, I worry about Shinji and how he's doing with this all."

All Fusei could suspect about this personal feeling was that she chalked it up to her maternal instincts. They haven't stopped ever since that day Shinji was born…or when he was kidnapped…not even when she found him. They were a twenty-four/seven force that refused to be made to give up on her emotional drive.

Tilting her head back, she looked up at a nearby streetlight as one of her memories from when she was pregnant resurfaced in her conscious.

" _Ahh… He moved,"_ she had told her boyfriend, placing her left hand on her swollen belly in her room.

" _Huh?"_ Genshi-teki uttered under her.

" _Shinji,"_ she explained to him, _"he just moved."_

" _Really?"_

" _Yes. Feel right here."_

She had placed his right hand against her distended gut and waited for a reaction from their son.

" _Oh!"_ Genshi-teki reacted to their child's activity. _"You're right. He's up and about."_

She then got off his lap and held his hands in front of her, smiling at him.

 _He was happy at our being together,_ she thought, smiling from the immense happiness that had been shared between the three of them.

" _He's happy for us both,"_ she had told Genshi-teki. _"This means he can tell what his mommy's feeling right now. He feels my love for the both of you…and he feels your love for the both of us, too."_

" _He can feel all of that?"_ He questioned, surprised by his girlfriend's belief of this.

" _That's right…so make sure you never stop loving us."_

Even through the horrors of Second Impact's results and the devastation it caused Tokyo, Fusei had held onto hope that the both of them and Shinji would be alright. She would've waded through a legion of other girls that had more potential than she did and didn't fool around with their boyfriends or get pregnant at an early age if it meant doing right by her son.

 _We keep you alive in our hearts and memories, Genshi-teki,_ she thought, bringing her head back up to view the park around her.

" _It was nice to meet you,"_ Shinji's voice went in her mind.

"It was nice to find you after so long, Shinji," she uttered to herself as she got up.

-x-

"…Ikari can't be depended upon any further," said SEELE 01 to the rest of the council members present. "His errors are known and his lack of reliance has come under fire. His days are numbered beyond our use of him."

"And now this," said SEELE 06, "refusing our request to speak with the First Child. If he denies our request further by sending in a substitute in place of her, we will have no other alternative than to have NERV neutralized."

"Give him twenty-four more hours to oblige our request," suggested SEELE 10 to the others. "If he continues to refuse…then we will seek other means to ensure our agenda."

With no other suggestions expressed, the council had agreed on the choice made. And so, the disgrace known as Gendo Ikari had at least one more day to permit them a meeting with the First Child…or else he would face the consequences for his disobedience.

-x-

Rei stood in front of Unit-01, unable to sleep or think of anything beyond the thought that ran through her consciousness. This dark train of thought that had gone into motion the day of the compatibility test where the Hitode woman was present and Shinji revealed that he had met her over a day before…and the anger that coursed through her nerves at the mere sight of her face.

"This…is all your fault," she spoke towards the purple behemoth. "You drove us to this…and all because you didn't consider the possibility of someone who knew him, that was related to him that would go to their limits to find him. If she takes him away from the both of us, we get nothing but agony over this…and it'll be your fault. He'll want to go with her."

The Eva never responded, but the girl knew it couldn't have said anything to her. And even if it could have done so, what would be spoken? How would any response have been taken?

"Remove the woman, and he will have no one that claims to be family to him," she continued. "Keep him where he can't be taken, and the woman loses her hold on him."

-x-

Shinji didn't sleep well that night. He kept looking out the window and up at the sky. The stars, the darkness, the airglow and eeriness left him feeling like a few hours had gone by before he realized that he must've been daydreaming at night.

 _Why do I feel like something terrible is going to happen?_ He thought, seeing the night sky shift into the daylight as the clouds were grayish-blue.

His left hand reached for his mother's charm around his neck, finding comfort in its presence. For another brief moment, he felt like he was with Fusei and Genshi-teki. He still had to hold onto that hope that after the last Angel showed up and was dealt with, NERV would be disbanded, the Evas would be decommissioned or dismantled, and he would leave the city to be with his family.

 _Mother… I'm still waiting for us to leave this life behind and move onto a happy future._

To be continued…

A/N: Jeez, I couldn't get that background music from the last episode of the second season of _Attack on Titan_ where they get away and it was my cousin's birthday. What do you think is going to happen next?


	12. Sacrifice

Creation began on 09-25-17

Creation ended on 10-11-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Sacrifice

"…Mister Aida?" Fusei addressed Kensuke, who seemed bothered by something as she entered his room to help him get out for a few hours. "Are you doing alright?"

"Doctor Hitode," he responded, sounding like something was wrong. "Will Shinji be around today?"

"Yes, why?"

The boy looked at the door to his room and then reached under his pillow and pulled out a folded piece of paper and gave it to the woman.

"Don't speak," he told her. "Maybe you'll understand."

She unfolded the paper and read what was written.

" _Rei Ayanami met with me last night and left me with a message for Shinji Ikari to Fusei Hitode. She said she was going to…dispose of her, no matter what it takes to do so."_ Fusei read it, and looked up at the boy.

Kensuke was concerned with this.

"How did she seem to you?" She asked him.

"Really pissed off about you being near him," he explained. "But…are you truly?"

"Truly, what?"

He leaned forward to meet her closer and whispered, "Shinji's mother? Is it true?"

She leaned closer to him and whispered, "It's as true as the fact that there's only one Angel left to face."

"You need to be careful, then," he warned her. "I don't know why, but she feels…threatened by you being around Shinji, even when it's within your rights to do so. And if he loses you, Shinji will have lost both his parents and be alone."

As she carefully deposited him into the wheelchair she brought in, she expressed, "Is there anything about Ms. Ayanami that you can tell me that would explain this behavior of hers?"

"There's really nothing I can say about her. She keeps to herself."

"But…is she a friend of Shinji's?"

"That's harder to explain. How does she fit into one's social circle the way others would? She's just…hard to understand…because she doesn't really say anything about herself. Nothing about her parents, where she lived before she came to Tokyo-3 a year ago, hobbies, nothing. It's like she doesn't really exist, even though she stands out in front of everyone."

Carefully setting his bandaged leg on the stirrup, Fusei suspected that someone knew about who Rei Ayanami was. And she had a good guess on who was the best person to start with on solving the mystery behind the girl that seemed to hate her.

-x-

"…Are you going somewhere, Mr. Fuyutsuki," Fusei's mother asked the elder sub-commander, seeing standing in front of the door leading out of the apartment.

"I apologize for this revelation I had last night," he turned to say to her. "I just needed to go to a radio or television station to say something to whoever might be listening. I want to say the things I didn't say all those years ago."

"Do you honestly believe telling a truth others have done all in their power to bury from the world will do anything to amend the tragedy they still feel in their souls?" She asked him; she still had painful dreams of those months where she lost her husband and father. "Those that don't agree with your decision to expose them will likely come after you the moment they know where you are…and then I wouldn't be doing my assigned job, which is to make sure you don't get killed because you knew my grandson wasn't your ass of a former student's son."

"It was hardly that bastard that convinced me to join NERV," he explained, feeling a new disgust that stemmed from his past. "I had actually believed in a young woman who I didn't know had committed such a blight upon your family."

"People are capable of anything they choose to do towards others. Take it from a woman that has almost done something she almost regretted doing years ago."

"What did you almost do?"

"I once thought of running over this woman that I thought was trying to seduce my father a year after my mother had passed away. I almost did so, not thinking of the consequences if I had done so… I knew where she lived, her daily routine, everything I needed to know to get rid of her…but in the end, I did something better than commit vehicular homicide. I confronted her at her house, wanting to know if she was trying to get with him. I have to say, those five minutes were a deciding factor between life and death. In the end, I was glad I didn't go through with my initial intention."

Fuyutsuki couldn't believe that Fusei's mother once thought of actually killing another woman as an example of showing that people were capable of anything.

"But in the end, you didn't kill that woman and you have two daughters that don't have a mother with a record," he told her.

"That doesn't change the fact that I still know what it's like to want to," she responded. "I still think about what might've happened had I done it, gone through with it…and it makes me wonder what I might've done if I had been the one to find the people responsible for hurting my daughter by taking her baby from her."

 _I get the feeling that if you had met Yui, you'd have made her pay for the crime in the harshest of ways,_ he thought, feeling that neither age, wisdom or simply looking attractive would have protected Yui from the justifiable wrath from the women of the Hitode family. "I can't change my previous action those years ago…but I make my voice heard to any that will listen for however long they choose."

-x-

She wasn't listening to his sense of reason. It was like she couldn't get that once a line was crossed, there was no turning back once you got too far.

 _Is she too far gone to listen to reason,_ wondered Shinji as he sat in the cafeteria, _or is she just too close to that man?_

In front of him on the table was an unopened bento he had prepared this morning, but found himself unable to eat it, despite his appetite.

" _If what she said to me was any indication that she has a serious problem,"_ he recalled Kensuke telling him earlier when he came to the trauma ward to see him, _"Rei really doesn't like your mother, Shinji."_

Then he opened his bento and picked up his chopsticks. This was something he wasn't going to figure out on an empty stomach.

"Hey," he was greeted by his mother a few minutes later.

"Hey," he greeted back as she sat down across the table from him. "How are you doing this afternoon?"

"Fine. I'm… I'm doing fine. You?"

"A little on edge."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Yeah. I don't get Ayanami right now. It's like she can't comprehend how one shouldn't cross a line and do something others are uncomfortable with knowing."

"You mean, her not-so-subtle reactions toward me?"

"Yeah. I mean, she has, more or less, threatened you. She thinks that you're unnecessary, and it's very disturbing to hear something like that from someone you work with."

"Have you tried talking to her?"

"She's not exactly a talkative person."

Fusei had to agree with him on that; even though they have both spoken with Rei, it wasn't as though the girl demonstrated any interests in what others often talk about, even to small degrees. No indication that the young girl even tried to think about anything that a girl her age would normally think about, not that she was an expert on what girls were into thinking.

"Asuka has more bark in her than any other girl I've met since coming here," Shinji explained.

"Eh-heh… She's very expressive," she agreed with him.

-x-

"…Section Two located the First Child," Hyuga told Misato on the bridge in Central Dogma. "She's being escorted to Commander Ikari's office."

"It's really troublesome now," she stated. "It's not like them to lose sight of someone like her…and then take five hours to find her again. Where was she?"

"In the Eva pens," he revealed. "What's this story I'm hearing that Rei has it in for Ms. Hitode?"

"That's something I'd like to understand myself. This didn't start until after Ms. Hitode showed up."

"It's not like she did anything wrong to begin with. True, she might've joined NERV under some false pretense, but if she was working with some limited information that was available, how else could she have ascertained that her son was probably here? The chances of her ever finding him after fourteen years of separation were very slim to none."

"According to her, she had to rely on friends and family to keep her going…and the recent developments in searching through DNA. Maybe Rei's upset about this revelation. How do you go and accept the truth that a boy you work with isn't related to the guy that tells you what to do? Or even more so, how do you live with such a discovery and try to move on after?"

But as much as Misato wanted to understand the exact cause of Rei's negativity towards Fusei, NERV had other things to deal with at the moment. One such matter was the imminent arrival of the Fifth Child to replace Shinji. Another matter was the synchronization test scheduled for late this evening…as the First Child was set to synchronize with Unit-01.

-x-

Gendo was not having a good time with the personnel he couldn't figure out on who was putting disrespectful graffiti on his office door and when they found the time to do so without being seen. In addition to another designation for his previous "baby snatcher" bad mark, someone had put "The Devil's Bastard" in green on it sideways while "Rot in Hell" was painted on upside-down in orange paint.

"Commander Ikari," he was addressed by Rei, reminded that she was standing in front of him. "Will he be piloting Unit-01 again?"

"No," he answered her. "Until further notice, the Third Child is suspended from active duty indefinitely. You will pilot Unit-01."

"And the Fifth Child?"

"Maintain your distance from him. He may not be who he seems to be."

But Rei had a different priority on her mind. She had to deal with the Hitode woman, whom she suspected would be present during the next test.

 _If she's near, you know what must be done,_ she thought. _If he's near, you make sure he can't get away._

-x-

Although it was that time of the month for her, Asuka gave Shinji the benefit of the doubt and tried her best to refrain from bad-mouthing him.

 _I don't know why I have to go through this just because I'm a woman,_ she thought as she stood in front of the bathroom mirror as she got ready for the synchronization test. _It's not like I even want children of my own one day._

As she walked out, she passed by Fusei.

"Can I trouble you with a personal question, Ms. Soryu?" She asked her, catching her attention.

"Huh?!" She reacted, turning around to face her. "What is it?"

"I'm just a physician when I'm not a computer expert, but didn't NERV give you pain medication or any instructions on how to manage your time of the month?"

"NERV was supposed to do that?"

Hearing that was enough of an explanation for Fusei to get that the girl likely self-managed her cramps.

"If any agency has access to medical treatment, even something as trivial as menstruation, they have to provide such resources to those that require them. NERV is no exception to that rule."

"I'm rarely harmed during the battles with the Angels."

"It wouldn't matter if you're never harmed physically. You should get a prescription for birth control to help manage your cramps."

They walked down to the testing chamber for the scheduled synchronization test.

"Tell me, did you ever feel terrible during your time of the month?" Asuka asked her.

"Only once," she revealed. "I was eleven when my monthly visitor showed up for the first time. I admit I was not myself during an entire week. I got angry over the most trivial of things, whether it was at my father leaving his novel open on the floor or at my sister forgetting to brush her hair. My mother got me on the pill and about a day later, I was starting to feel like my old self."

"Sounds like you became a drug-dependent drone."

"Only because I don't trust myself to do or say something to someone that I'll later regret."

"Have you?"

"I yelled at my father once. Called him something I wish I hadn't. I made up with him the next day, but it doesn't change the fact that I crossed a line with someone I loved."

"What about now? You still take it?"

"Only once a month, always a day after the day the beast pays a visit. Helps to keep a lady's hormones in check."

Asuka would rather be free of her current pain than be reduced to a drone, but if there was a newer version of this pill, she was all for it.

"Excuse me, ladies," they stopped in front of a young boy of probably fifteen years that was in front of them. "I was told that I was to report to Central Dogma. Could you show me how to get there?"

In a strange sense, the boy looked like a male version of Rei. His hair was a paler shade of gray, skin was chalk-white that looked sensitive and fragile, and his eyes were the same, blood-red coloring. But there was something else about this boy that just…didn't seem to add up with the rest of him. It was like…something was off…or just not right.

"Uh, are you supposed to be here?" Fusei asked him.

"Oh, where are my manners? I'm sorry. My name is Kaworu Nagisa, and I was assigned to NERV's Evangelion program as one of the pilots."

"The Fifth Child?" Asuka questioned. "You're the Fifth Child?"

This bothered Fusei. This boy was dressed in the same uniform as her son was, but unless he was a new transfer student, he didn't exist in the files she and Misato found on each student born sometime after Second Impact occurred.

"Yes," the boy, Kaworu, answered.

-x-

Ritsuko Akagi was nowhere to be found in the trauma ward. This didn't sit well for Shinji, who decided to (after some hard thinking on the matter) question the faux-blond about Rei's personal background…if she knew anything about it. It was only because realization hit hard on the fact that as much as he has interacted with the girl, he didn't really know anything about her…with only what he had initially seen and heard of her. And he didn't trust her to say anything now that he learned from both Kensuke and his mother that Rei had crossed the line he warned her not to.

 _But if she's not here, then where could she be?_ He wondered, unable to ascertain the whereabouts of the faux-blond woman. _Even Ms. Ibuki couldn't tell me where she could have gone to._

-x-

Ritsuko claimed to feel no such thing as humiliation, standing in front of the twelve monoliths that represented SEELE, but that was far from the truth. In truth, she was really disgusted to be doing this…and bothered by a new revelation that was brought to her attention.

In need of information regarding the aftermath of the last attack, SEELE had demanded an audience with the First Child and informed Gendo Ikari that he had twenty-four hours to produce the girl to them…and in their disgust, Gendo had sent the head of Project "E" in place of the girl, defying their request…and showing that he was beyond any capacity left for cooperation with the council.

 _He sent me…as a substitute for Rei?_ She thought, and decided that, like everything else that came to light, enough was enough when it came to Gendo.

" _Isn't that the same for you, Dr. Akagi?"_ She recalled Rei asking her, referring to her attention being given to Gendo above others.

And it was true that her attention had been diverted between the discovery of Fusei being Shinji's real mother and less focused on the agenda that Gendo had for after the Angels were dealt with…to not being focused on it at all now. And after that talk with the woman that was her age and had a more stable relationship with her mother than she wished she had with her own mother, the faux-blond really wanted to get out of Naoko Akagi's shadow and just do her own thing now.

 _I'm nobody's substitute,_ she decided for herself, choosing what had to be done.

-x-

Although it went against the order that she be confined for the remainder of the seventy-two-hour hold she was supposed to be under, Rei was permitted to participate in the synchronization test with Unit-01.

" _If she's going to test an unstable Eva for everyone,"_ went Asuka eight minutes earlier to Misato, _"then shouldn't Shinji and Fusei be as far from her as possible when it starts?"_

It was actually the smartest suggestion Asuka had spoken of, since only a handful of people knew that Rei was clearly out to get Fusei. So Fusei and Shinji were outside the base during the test, though the former hoped that the data being collected from the test was helping to put an end to the madness that were the Angels.

"So…you don't know where Dr. Akagi is, either?" Shinji asked her.

"No," she answered him, sitting on the ground in front of a fountain in NERV's garden area. "If anyone knows something about Ms. Ayanami, it's gotta be her, though, right?"

"It's not like we can ask that man. He won't answer."

"He's got…much worse problems than what he already has."

Fusei laid on her back to look up at the ceiling. It wasn't as realistic as the sky itself was, but at least they had natural sunlight shining underground.

"I guess it does make it easier working underground," Shinji stated, "having something pleasant to look up at from time to time."

"Yeah," she agreed with him.

Ring! Fusei's cell phone rang.

She got up and looked at who was calling her…and couldn't believe her eyes.

"Ritsuko is calling my phone," she told Shinji, and then answered the call. "Hello?"

"Hello, Ms. Hitode," responded Ritsuko to her. "Is Shinji with you right now?"

"Uh, yeah, he's with me."

"If you two are at the Geo-Front, could you go down to my office in half an hour? There's something about Rei you both should know about."

She then disconnected the call before Fusei could question her on what that "something" was.

"It seems we're going to get an answer on who Ms. Ayanami is," she told her son. "Doctor Akagi wants us to come down to her office."

-x-

Misato was beyond freaked as a result of the synchronization test that ended eight minutes ago. Not only was Rei able to sync with Unit-01 like before when Shinji was a virtual unknown, but she was able to match the boy's previous synchronization ratio from when he went up against the Fifth Angel. If anything, it made her and some of the other personnel feel slightly intimidated by the albino girl.

It was just as disturbing with the Fifth Child, too, as he was used to sync with the suspended Unit-03 in place of the Fourth Child, which shouldn't have been possible due to the factors involving the pairing of a pilot to an Evangelion. But he was somehow able to sync with Unit-03, which should've only been able to accommodate the otaku…and what was more was that he was able to do so with a much higher synchronization than the otaku.

 _Who is this boy?_ She wondered. _And how was Rei able to match Shinji's synchronization?_

As she walked down the hall, her plan was to find Kaji and question him if he knew anything about the First and Fifth Children that she didn't know about…or at least if he knew where to find Ritsuko.

"Misato?" She came around a corner and just avoided bumping into Shinji and Fusei as they were coming down from wherever they were coming from around the corner.

"Shinji? Fusei? Where are you two off to in such a hurry?"

"Doctor Akagi's office," Fusei explained. "She called me almost half an hour ago and said there was something about Ms. Ayanami that we should know about."

"There's a lot about Rei I'd like to know about myself."

The three went to Ritsuko's office and found her there, looking like she was having a bad day.

"Bad day?" Fusei asked her.

"In many respects," she answered her. "Before I say anything else, are you sure you can handle the truth about Rei?"

None of them could speak for the rest, but Misato wanted to know was going on.

Shinji needed to know what was up with the girl's attitude towards his mother, and Fusei had to know more about the girl to better prepare for the inevitable conflict between them or Gendo.

"We might as well know all that we can about her," Shinji expressed.

"Yeah," Fusei and Misato agreed.

Ritsuko sighed and got up from her chair. She led them down to an elevator and took them to the lower levels of NERV HQ.

"At first, I wanted to say that the girl was like Ikari," she explained to them, referring to Gendo instead of Shinji. "Someone who isn't adept at living. But that's hardly the case with her at all."

The elevator stopped and she led them down an old corridor that had a lingering smell of decay. Entering an old room, furnished with only the barest of things a person needed to survive, Shinji couldn't help but see the comparison it had to Rei's apartment.

"Why does this place look like Ayanami's apartment?" He asked Ritsuko.

"This was where she lived the first years of her life," she revealed. "The light and water serve as reflections, echoes of her memories of this place."

"When you say that she lived here for the first years of her life," Fusei spoke, "you mean to say that she was born down here, don't you?"

"Very perceptive, Ms. Hitode. Yes, she was born down here."

"But how does this explain her behavior? Her attitude towards me?"

Ritsuko led them further down the hall and into a large chamber full of holes in the ground and a strange, two-barred cross impression, and in them were the most misshapen of forms that resembled the most familiar of beings to the group.

"Are those…Evas?" Shinji asked.

"The very first ones," Ritsuko explained. "All failures, dumped here ten years ago and forgotten about. At least one-hundred-nine attempts until Unit-00, the first Eva that actually worked."

"A graveyard for Evangelions."

"No, Shinji," went Fusei in response to this. "A graveyard would imply some sort of memorial to remember those of the past. These were just thrown aside like garbage, left to pile up and decay over time. Nobody remembers them. Nobody cares about them."

"This was also where Ikari's wife disappeared," Ritsuko revealed.

"His wife?" Misato asked; there wasn't much to go on with any details regarding the woman she, like so many others, had been misled into believing was Shinji's mother.

"It was in Two-Thousand-Four. You might not remember much of it, Shinji, but you were there when it happened. The failed experiment with Unit-01."

But Shinji didn't remember anything about the Eva. Before he came to Tokyo-3, his past was just one lousy day after another because of who he thought was his father being part of the reason he was looked down upon by others.

"Why was she doing an experiment with the Evangelion? And why bring Shinji to see it happen?" Fusei asked her.

"I don't know why she did it. You'd have to ask the two men of her past that knew her. Or rather, that thought they knew her."

"Commander Ikari and Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki," went Misato; these two men seemed the obvious ones that knew of the woman the most. "But the former has no interest in saying anything and the latter is in the wind."

Ritsuko then led them down into another, smaller chamber. This one disturbingly like an architect's attempt at building a room to resemble a brain and spinal column, based on the ceiling and contraption in front of them.

"What is this place?" Fusei asked her.

"This is where the components for the Dummy System are produced," she answered.

"The components? You told me that the components were mechanical and software."

Ritsuko took out a remote and pressed a button to cause the panels on the walls to retract, revealing a large tank of sorts.

"There's a lot about NERV that was never meant to be known," she told them. "Ikari is among the most secretive people in the history of the agency. Lie enough times to hide, keep quiet about everything else, and you don't know what is truth, anymore. One of the darkest secrets is Rei."

All around them in the tank, dozens of bodies floating aimlessly in the orange-tinted water. But they all bore an uncanny resemblance to the albino girl of few words and even fewer expressions.

"Ayanami?" Shinji gasped, looking to his left and right, seeing the girl all over the place.

"You mean…this is the Dummy System?" Misato questioned Ritsuko.

"Yeah," said the faux-blond as Fusei held her son, trying to keep the both of them from going crazy from the horrid sight in front of them. "While the Dummy System relies on the software, these serve as the physical basis for the whole system. But they're nothing more than spares for Ikari. Spares to keep Rei involved in his goal."

Fusei had seen the movies and documentaries involving cloning and the possibilities it possessed, but this went beyond the realm of science fiction and broke all the rules of the world she knew.

"This…is just wrong," she told Ritsuko. "Why?"

"Fifteen years ago, human beings found what they believed to be a god, and, in their arrogance, tried to possess it. For their arrogance, everyone was punished. That was what caused Second Impact. And the god they found was gone. But in their continued arrogance, people tried to revive the god, and from that was the being they called Adam. And from Adam, people tried to create what they felt was a god in their own image, and that was the being called Eva."

"God created Man in his image…and Man created Eva in his image? You call them human?"

"They are human. Devoid of conscious, we give them souls salvaged from the deceased. Except Rei is the only one that has a soul."

"What do you mean?" Misato questioned.

"The Evas are soulless, so NERV imbues them with souls of women that are deceased. Every time Rei is killed, her soul always comes back here. Whenever she dies, she ends up back in the tube and returns to life."

"But…what does it have to do with her attitude towards me?" Fusei asked.

"I don't believe her attitude towards you is entirely her own. I think she got her negativity towards you from Ikari's wife."

At first, Fusei wanted to question the validity of such a belief, but then the revelation that NERV was able to put human souls into the Evas had her suspecting that not everything was as it seemed. And the Eva and the First Child were anything but full of clarity.

"You mean," Shinji spoke up, "when the Eva went crazy that day Ayanami was in it… It was trying to attack my mother…out of some sort of spite? And now Ayanami wants to do the same, like she's possessed by some ghost?"

It was natural for anyone in Shinji's position to disbelieve something like this. Anyone that didn't deal with this on a regular basis would, or one that was lied to or kept in the dark on many things. Even Fusei felt that it was crazy to accept.

"How else would you explain her behavior?" Ritsuko suggested to them. "Why else would she say the things she's said? She's been influenced by both Ikari and his wife ever since they got her."

-x-

At first, her dislike of the girl was simply because she wanted to prove that she was the best pilot of the Evangelion. But after the last test, Asuka had more reason to dislike Rei. It was the way she spoke of both Shinji and Fusei, how one needed to be kept away from the other when she bought up their relationship to get a reaction from her. Not even the fact that the redhead had a new score of one-hundred percent to her name did anything to quell her concerns over the pair.

 _She's gotta be crazy,_ she thought as she walked down the hall after she changed out of her plugsuit. _What, does she have a grudge against people whose long-lost parents have suddenly returned and want to be involved in their lives…or is she just targeting that idiot because it's his mother?_

Suddenly, the world around her grew dark…and she fell to the ground. All she could register before losing consciousness…was that the back of her head felt like it had collided with a wall.

-x-

"Shinji?" Fusei spoke to her son, seeing him in the cafeteria at one of the tables, looking depressed about what they had seen and heard an hour ago…and what Ritsuko had done afterward out of spite towards Gendo. "You wanna talk about it?"

He looked at her face and found it hard to explain how this revelation made it harder to look at the First Child or even think about her.

"I don't understand how you can be so calm after learning of this," he uttered, but looked around to make sure that no one else was close by to hear them. "I mean… We just found out something terrible, that Ayanami's not who we thought she was, that the man…and his wife…are more off than I can find the words to describe them…and you're not freaking out over any of it."

Fusei looked around them and leaned in closely to Shinji as she sat across the table from him.

"I am freaking out from it all, Shinji," she told him. "I just don't show it right now. I can't afford to show fear that Ms. Ayanami's an unstable person that won't be swayed to look the other way. Or that the Eva is some mad scientist's grand design."

"Why? Why can't you?"

"My reason is right in front of me. If I start to lose my cool, everything that is still stable will shake at their foundations and come tumbling down."

"But…they could have done the same thing to you long ago. They could have jammed you into one of those things if you were…and…"

"Shinji," she calmed him down and took hold of his left hand. "They thought I was dead that day they took you. When I sleep, I sleep just like the dead. That's why they did what they did. They never bothered to check if I was, though. If they wanted to try and put me in one of their cyborgs, they would've done so sooner or later. Even if they had, I still would have gone to extremes to keep you out of the Eva if I had known what it was and the harm it could do to you. But I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere, Shinji."

-x-

"Where's Asuka?" Misato asked Hyuga as she stepped on the bridge in Central Dogma, finding him and Shigeru there.

"You mean, you weren't told?" Hyuga responded.

"Told what?"

-x-

Cerebral hemorrhage due to blunt force trauma. That was what the medical team revealed to Ritsuko when she was informed of the Second Child's incapacitation. And the explanation to why was thus: Someone struck Asuka from behind with enough force to knock her out.

Ritsuko had a good suspicion on who, as well. It didn't cross her mind that Rei could do something of this sort at all.

 _And if something happens to her now, she won't come back,_ she thought, a bit hopeful that something would happen to the girl.

As she walked down the hall of the trauma ward, she felt like her workload hadn't decreased in the least, even when it should've. And if Gendo wanted to get on her case for the destruction of the Dummy System, she was willing to explain her actions to spite him; the guy was clearly losing his hold on everything. But as she stepped into the room the Fourth Child was in, she thought that Rei couldn't get any more of being a suspect in the assault on Asuka.

There she was, beside the bed, trying to suffocate the boy as he struggled for breath.

"Rei!" She gasped, running over and shoving the girl aside. "What are you doing?!"

On the floor, Rei looked up at her and spoke, "He is unnecessary. He is of no use to anyone, anymore."

The faux-blond looked at the otaku as he refilled his lungs with oxygen and then back at the girl. If it had been against the Angels, she would've been willing to sacrifice the pilots if it meant the survival of the human race, but then Fusei came along and changed everything. Now, even though there was still one more Angel out there, it didn't seem necessary to put them all at risk. But here was Rei, trying to kill one with a broken leg and was recovering from internal injuries.

"That's not for you to decide, Rei," she told her. "Leave now or else security will escort you to a holding cell."

Rei got up and walked out of the room.

-x-

Shinji didn't sleep easy that night. Finding out from Fusei, who found out from Ritsuko, that Asuka had been attacked by someone…and that Kensuke was nearly suffocated by Rei didn't ease his concerns that things would be fine when the last Angel showed itself and was defeated. He thought she was after his mother, but couldn't understand why she tried to hurt Asuka and Kensuke.

 _Has their influence really taken hold of her?_ He wondered, trying to comprehend how a man he had no ties to, that treated him like scum, and a woman that deceived him in his youth could be the cause of a girl's recent foulness in her behavior. _Mother, be careful down there._

-x-

Even though there was security in place to keep watch over Asuka and Kensuke and make sure that Rei Ayanami wasn't on the premises, Fusei, under her Hippocratic oath, stayed the night to rotate the shifts of who would watch who for an hour at a time, including herself.

" _I don't get it, Dr. Hitode,"_ Kensuke told her when she was keeping watch over him for her first hour of the night. _"Why did Rei try to kill me? I didn't even do anything to her."_

 _Because Gendo has a nasty habit of wanting to cast aside people who no longer serve a purpose to him,_ she thought to herself, sitting by the door to keep watch over who came and went.

"Um…do we have a radio here?" Kensuke asked her. "Sometimes, listening to music or news helps to calm my nerves."

"I have a radio app on my phone," she told him, taking out her iPhone and turning on the radio app. "I'm going to recommend that you be transferred to a different hospital for your safety if Ms. Ayanami persists in her attempts."

"And if she tries to kill you?" He asked her.

She sighs and explains, "I'm not some woman with a license to practice medicine or a degree in computer expertise. I know how to defend myself and use non-lethal measures to ensure that I don't violate the oath I took when I became a doctor."

A man and woman walked past the door and Fusei sighed again.

"I never understood why that oath existed to begin with when there's no way to save everyone," Kensuke revealed to her.

"It's a black and white world," she explained, "but there are some who live within the world of gray, which blends the two planes. Even if someone you're treating someone that is injured, the point of the oath is for a doctor to not harm anyone deliberately. You stick a syringe into someone's arm to draw blood to find out what's wrong with them, that's helping them get results on what ails them and how to treat them, but when you amputate an arm or leg that aren't broken or can still be saved without even getting consent from a patient or telling them, that's doing harm."

"And you saved my leg and insides. You didn't remove them or try to do so without my consent. Thank you, Dr. Hitode."

"…And here we are with a rerun of an interview from earlier this afternoon from a man that says he works for NERV," said a male voice on the radio app. "And you are, sir?"

"Kozo Fuyutsuki," a second male voice uttered.

"And what brought you here today?"

"To reveal a truth that recently came to light that the world should know about. A fourteen-year-old secret that hurt two families."

"Oh? And how serious is this?"

"Everyone that has ever heard of or even had an opinion of man known as Gendo Rokubungi, who later became Gendo Ikari, is one of two people that did something so wrong, he should be punished to the full extent of the law."

Gasp! Kensuke reacted to this broadcast.

"He kidnapped a young woman's newborn son in the aftermath of the Tokyo devastation caused by Second Impact…and passed him off as his own son."

"Oh, now, that's terrible. And do you know who this woman is that lost her son to this lunatic?"

"I do, but out of newfound respect for her, I prefer to keep her name anonymous. I can, however, say that she spent the entirety of her son's life trying to find him…and only managed to do so a few weeks ago when she showed up at Tokyo-3."

"And Tokyo-3's been nearly evacuated due to these repeated attacks by giant monsters, right?"

"That, I can't say. I was removed when Ikari made an attempt on my life after discovering that he had no children and who the boy belonged to."

Fusei couldn't believe that Fuyutsuki was telling this all. If the wrong people heard of this broadcast, they could find him and put him down like a rabid animal that was unsafe, just to shut him up for good.

"So the guy took someone else's child and then abandoned them shortly after the death of his wife," the radio guy spoke. "After all these years, why didn't he just do the right thing and return the boy to his mother? Why not just explain why he took him, treated him the way he did?"

"Because…his wife's death was no accident," Fuyutsuki revealed. "In the experiment she participated in, the one where she died, she told me not to tell him what she was going to do, fearing that he would stop her. In truth, I sneered at Ikari in silence…because I didn't like him, either. He's never been one to do the right thing, including admitting his crimes in their entirety. He thinks he's untouchable, that the rule of law doesn't apply to him. But I do hope he gets what's coming to him for his sins."

Kensuke looked at Fusei and uttered, "He's referring to you as Shinji's mother, isn't he?"

"Yeah," she answered, "but he's keeping my name out."

"And you're sure you can't disclose the identity of the boy's actual mother?" The radio guy asked Fuyutsuki, hoping to get some sort of details from the elder.

"No," he answered. "If I revealed her name, I'd be putting her family in danger…and they've suffered enough loss already."

"And should those that don't agree with your divulging of sensitive information?"

"Then this should get their attention because I'm going to tell you what NERV was really up to that had absolutely nothing to do with protecting the people."

-x-

Gendo couldn't believe his ears when some random employee of NERV told him to tune into the radio stations for something that had everyone bothered. Not only was one radio station playing a broadcast of Fuyutsuki's interview, but the old man was revealing what he had done and what NERV had been misled into doing, destroying the agency's credibility.

"…Hopefully, when all the Angels are gone, the agency will be disbanded before things get worse for the people still there," he heard Fuyutsuki say to the radio guy. "I wouldn't be surprised if most of the personnel decided to up and leave moments after the last Angel was confirmed to be dead."

And the worst part of Gendo hearing this was that Fuyutsuki was most likely right about the people leaving right after the last Angel was defeated.

"And as for Ikari, I hope he gets what's coming to him soon."

But Gendo felt concern that some of the personnel would try to come after him after the last Angel was dealt with.

-x-

"…That was pretty heavy of you, Mr. Fuyutsuki," said Fusei's mother to the elder later that night. "How many people do you suspect will react negatively to what you revealed?"

"It'll depend upon how they react," he told her, setting down his cup of tea.

"Still…just thinking about it sounds terrible. What led you to side with these people in the beginning?"

"I was threatened by them if I tried to reveal what had truly happened. It doesn't matter now, I've said more than I could have said years ago. What happens to me now is in fate's hands."

"Fate," she sighs as she poured herself another cup of tea. "People who believe in fate believe in forces beyond their control, that cause things to happen that are for better or worse. Never did those believers believe in a small group of people that wanted this madness to happen fifteen years ago. All those people, all those cities and towns in various countries. They were all expendable, they didn't matter to the twisted goal of some madmen. It's insane."

"I see insanity on a regular basis."

"Still, the idea of forcing all of mankind to unite as a spiritual entity and replace the deities that we believe in, to erase all the sense of loneliness and pain… As potentially benevolent as it could be, it removes one's privacy in the process, allowing everyone to know everything about anyone. And nobody is able to return to their life from before it got commingled with everyone else's."

"Ikari called it the path to God. It was believed to be a means to save the human race, but how does one view this method as saving the human race?"

"It's either an option accepted by the majority of the world that take the time to accept it or not…or just an excuse to do something and try to get away with it. But there's one thing you can't ever escape from, no matter what you do."

"Which is?"

"The fact that you did something that hurt others. It's universal history…and the past will always come back to bite you in the ass…and anywhere else, for that matter. The past is never at rest. Any sins committed in the past, one way or another, will break out and ruin you."

Fuyutsuki then pick back up his cup and finished his tea. Any sins he had left from his past that would come back to bite him, he would face them with what little honor he had left.

-x-

For once, Misato was glad that Shinji was asleep and Asuka was in a coma. The radio broadcast that revealed everything Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki knew was causing her to question everything she knew and thought she knew, over and over again. The revelation was going to turn NERV inside-out and likely cause a internal manhunt for Commander Ikari, whether or not he was prosecuted for his kidnapping of Shinji to the full extent of the law.

 _If everyone at NERV listened to that broadcast, things will likely get uglier than ever before,_ she thought as she looked down at Shinji's sleeping form. _As if things can't get any worse than now._

Little did she or anyone else know, things were going to get uglier real soon.

-x-

"This is an outrage!" SEELE 08 shouted. "Fuyutsuki revealed everything he knew to the public! Anyone that listened to that broadcast now know what really caused Second Impact and who was involved in its outcome!"

"We should've had him executed years ago!" SEELE 11 suggested. "This only happened because Ikari said he could handle him."

"Find him and execute him!" SEELE 04 demanded.

"It is moot," SEELE 10 stated. "The sooner we can achieve the Instrumentality Project on own terms, the sooner we can dispose of all the loose ends."

"The final Angel will be upon us in due time," SEELE 01 announced. "Our promised time is at hand."

-x-

He didn't like the look of the ravaged land. No trace of plant life, not even a weed, could be seen for miles in all three directions. The water of the ocean was as orange as the LCL…and smelled of blood. And the worst part for Shinji…was the giant, winged woman that reached high into the clear, eerily night sky…because she looked just like Rei Ayanami.

"What's going on?" He wondered as the giant woman looked down at him. "Aah!"

She reached down towards him with her hands and he tried to run away from her.

"You can't escape from me, Ikari-Kun," he heard Rei's voice behind him. "I won't let you leave with that unnecessary woman."

He turned at the sight of the right hand and ran faster…until he lost his footing and fell into the darkness beneath him.

"Waaaahh! Aaaaah!" He screamed.

Thud! Shinji fell hard onto the floor and opened his eyes, finding himself back in his room; what he had experienced before…was nothing more than a dream…or a nightmare.

"Ahh…ahh…ahh…" He panted, and then looked in front of him at his mother's charm, which landed in front of him.

He was relieved that it was undamaged, and picked it up and put it around his neck.

-x-

"…Ohhh…" Fusei groans as she drinks her first cup of coffee for the new day.

"I know, right?" Hyuga expressed, joining her in the coffee intake. "Night shifts stink like crazy."

"It wasn't the night shift of last night that wore me out," she explained. "It was keeping an eye out for Ms. Ayanami. Ever since it was suspected that she was the one to attack Ms. Soryu and her attempt on Mr. Aida's life, one can't even go to the restroom without getting a guard to be on the lookout for you as you take a powder."

"What is her deal with you, anyway?" Shigeru questioned as he drank his cup of coffee in front of the two. "Her silence was creepy enough as it is, but now… She's even creepier."

"To sum it up in just a few words," Fusei responded, "Ms. Ayanami wants to sanitize me."

She then threw her empty coffee cup into the compost bin away from them.

"What do you mean by 'sanitize' you?" Shigeru had to ask again.

"She doesn't like the fact that it was confirmed Shinji's my son…and wants me dead," she sighs. "It can't get any crazier than that."

The two men looked at each other before looking back at the woman, and then Hyuga expressed, "But that's not up to discussion. If it's the truth, then it's the truth. You can't do anything about the truth but either accept it or reject it."

"Even if she managed to do away with you, it's not like Shinji would forgive and forget," Shigeru added. "You two seriously need to get out of here the second the last Angel shows up and is defeated."

"Yeah, nobody would hold it against you for running home. I even hear Commander Ikari's facing life in prison for what he did to you."

"Tell me something, how do these rumors get around so quickly?" Fusei asked them.

"People hear things," they both told her.

-x-

Kaworu Nagisa stood in front of Unit-03 and almost regretted that he was about to do as he had been instructed to do. But what choice did he truly have?

Slice. He felt something small cut through his neck.

"Ah," he gasped, dropping to his knees, grasping his neck, feeling blood seeping out.

"You're unnecessary," he heard a female voice say to him, and he looked up at his would-be attacker, seeing Rei Ayanami, holding a small scalpel. "You are if no use to anyone."

Then, feeling that his life was dimming, Kaworu Nagisa fell face-down onto the floor. And then, he was gone.

Rei then kicked him into the pool and walked away. Even if the personnel found out she had a hand in this, there was little they could do now that the last Angel had been dealt with so easily.

-x-

NERV HQ felt like it had lost more light than the last time Shinji was here. As he and Misato stepped out of the elevator and into the hallway, they noticed a pair of EMTs carting away a gurney with a long, black bag.

Shinji didn't need to be an expert to know what had been in that bag.

"Misato?" He asked his guardian.

"Yes, Shinji?" She responded.

"Did you call my mother before we came down here?"

"Yeah."

-x-

According to the medical examiner, the boy had been dead for less than an hour, not long enough for rigor to take effect, but long enough for sufficient blood loss and oxygen deprivation to the brain, and the cause of death was determined to be severed jugular veins. Had they gotten to him sooner, Fusei was certain that they could've saved Kaworu's life. But what she wanted to ascertain now was who did this to the boy…and why.

"No clue on who could have done this, Dr. Hitode?" She heard Misato say to her as she and Shinji came into the room where Asuka lay in her coma.

"I've checked the security cameras for earlier, but the footage leading up to the murder has disappeared from the servers," she told them, checking Asuka's pulse. "The only people able to remove footage from the security cameras here are those with master access to the MAGI."

"Are you sure?"

As she set Asuka's arm back under the cover, Fusei responded, "I only have limited access to the MAGI regarding the data of the children's synchronization ratios and medical histories. The only ones with master access to the rest of the MAGI that could remove security footage…are Dr. Akagi and Gendo Ikari."

This, of course, narrowed the suspects down to just Gendo, since Ritsuko was incarcerated.

"Do you think you can get Ritsuko's access?" Misato asked her.

"You don't need to," they heard a male voice behind Misato, and they turned to see Kaji, who looked like he had something heavy on his mind. "I copied the footage before it was erased."

"And?"

"It was Rei that did it."

"Ayanami?" Shinji responded; he couldn't believe that she would…actually kill someone that only showed up recently to replace him. "Are you sure?"

"Believe me, I've looked at the footage twice…and she's the only albino girl in the city," Kaji told him, holding up a tablet and showing them the footage he copied.

The women and Shinji observed Rei as she came up to the boy as he stood in front of Unit-03…and slit his neck before putting him in the pool.

Fusei covered her mouth, but Shinji still couldn't believe that Rei could do this, even after trying to suffocate Kensuke.

Misato hadn't expected this from any of the children. From Asuka, she could expect fits of aggressive behavior, typical boy behavior from Kensuke, even the mild timidity from Shinji, but with Rei, there was just passiveness. The girl never did much of anything except…whatever she was told to by whoever had authority to give her orders.

Maybe it was because he found out about her origins, or even because he tried to find an alternate reason for her, like she needed to vent or something, but Shinji couldn't keep trying to delude himself into thinking that Rei would keep away from his mother. If she could kill the Fifth Child and try to get away with it, then she could cross the line and kill her…no matter what he told her.

"Where is she now?" Fusei asked Kaji.

"I don't know," he answered. "After she dumped his body, she just up and disappeared."

Fusei then reached into her left coat pocket and pulled out her Tazer, which had the unshaven man backing away.

"Oh, have some immunity," she told him. "It only has one setting, and that's stun. No kill. It goes against the oath I took as a doctor."

"What, you're just gonna taze Rei when you see her?" Misato asks.

"If she tries to become my judge and executioner," she responds; just because the girl that wasn't even a girl despised her enough to want her dead because of the influence of two unstable people, she wasn't going to be bullied or taken down by her. "It'd be easier just to try and talk with her and resolve the matter without violence."

"Except she won't give you that option," went Shinji. "But before it even comes to that, I want to talk to her the next time I see her."

"What could you possibly get out of her?" Kaji asks him.

Shinji looked at the adults with an intensity in his eyes that was tempered between compassion and anger towards the albino girl.

"How far she's willing to go for a selfish belief," he told them.

-x-

"The Fifth Child was found murdered within the Geo-Front," said SEELE 11 revealed to the council. "They don't know who caused the death."

"Did they know he was the final Angel?" SEELE 03 questions.

"There is no indication that they knew," answers SEELE 08. "He never fulfilled his duty."

"If this was Ikari's doing…" SEELE 03 uttered.

"Regardless, NERV has outlived its usefulness because of him," SEELE 01 cut him off. "He has caused this council more than enough trouble. We shall have him atone for his sins…with his own death."

"Yet, there is a case being made against him for kidnapping the Third Child that will stand to convict him," SEELE 10 reminded them, as they knew about the charges being brought up against Gendo. "There will be no need to deal with him if the authorities do away with him."

"We can't risk that he'll try to get away before that even happens. We need to deal with him immediately. Take NERV down."

-x-

He didn't go to the Eva cages to see if she was there, nor the fountain garden or the cafeteria. Instead, Shinji just wandered around the halls, hoping that he would just bump into Rei; he had his doubts about going to her apartment and finding her there.

 _How far she's willing to go over some belief,_ he thought, stepping into an elevator and pressing the button for a random floor.

A slow and depressing two minutes must have passed before the doors opened up…and revealed Gendo and Rei outside it.

Shinji sighed and looked at Rei.

"Just the person I needed to speak with," he uttered to her.

Rei then stepped inside and the doors closed, giving the two some privacy to converse.

"Have you visited the Second Child?" She asked him.

"Yeah," he answered. "She's still in a coma."

"A pity."

"But my mother says her chances of waking up are improving, though."

"Your mother?"

"Yes."

"You…put too much of your longing in her."

Shinji felt offended by her just now.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," he countered.

"How far are you willing to go to believe in her assumptions that you're her son?"

Now he had more incentive to be offended by her.

"And how far are you willing to go just for a falsehood belief, Ayanami?" He asked her, letting his feelings be shared. "We both know more about you. More than even I care to admit is beyond rational. We even know you tried to kill Kensuke and killed that other boy. You keep saying that my mother is unnecessary, but now the Evas themselves are unnecessary. We don't have to continue piloting them, anymore. People are preparing to leave the base en masse. What do you aim to do with your newfound freedom from this feud with the Angels?"

"Except the last Angel hasn't been encountered yet, so nobody's permitted to go anywhere."

"My mother was asked by Misato to perform a more thorough autopsy report on the boy you killed. She was disgusted by being asked to examine a dead boy, but Misato wanted to make sure that he was who he seemed to be, and you know what she found?"

Rei became curious, though she didn't show it.

"She found material substances that were exactly like what was found in the Fourth Angel, meaning he was the last Angel we were waiting for…and you killed him. You ended NERV's feud with the Angels, so everyone's leaving, regardless of whether or not they need permission to."

"Well, you shouldn't leave."

"Why? It would give me the opportunity to continue building my relationship with my mother, meet my aunt in person, meet my grandmother and my father's relatives. Give me one good reason to turn such an opportunity that had been denied to me by a pair of adults I don't even know…and don't want to know any further?"

"Because that woman is not your mother. You continue to persist in the belief that she is, it's only going to end badly."

"Is that so? What, Ayanami, you're going to go and kill my mother? If that man tells you to do it, would you kill her? You'd lay an offending finger on her…just to keep me from leaving with her, which is my choice to do so?"

Rei then responded, "If it became necessary, then yes. Because Dr. Hitode is an unnecessary person, no longer useful to anyone. Unnecessary people must be disposed of."

Shinji shook his head in the negative at Rei. This was all he needed to hear from her to know how messed up she truly was because of the people that corrupted her.

"Whether you believe the truth or not, she's my mother…and she suffered a lot of heartache trying to find me because of Commander Ikari and his wife. They just assumed she was dead without even bothering to check if she truly was. His wife is dead, so he has to face the consequences of the crime alone. I don't even know what is likely to happen later on…but I just know that I want to put this all behind me and move on. I'm sorry if you can't accept this."

The elevator doors opened and Shinji stepped out and walked away.

"People are entitled to their own opinions and beliefs, Ayanami," he told her, "but some opinions and beliefs aren't worth being entitled to!"

She stepped out of the elevator and watched him leave…with anger in her eyes; there was no way she was going to let him walk away with the Hitode woman. Not while she still had time to prevent him from doing so.

To be continued…

A/N: I seriously want to hear from you readers what you think might happen in the next chapter!


	13. Attack and Severance

Creation began on 10-11-17

Creation ended on 11-12-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Attack and Severance

Gendo had incarcerated Ritsuko Akagi following the destruction of the entire Dummy System. He was upset that the spares were ruined beyond NERV's capacity to restore, and if Rei was compromised, he'd lose one of the necessary pieces he needed to achieve his goal.

"I'll ask you again, Dr. Akagi," he spoke to Ritsuko, who looked away from him, sitting on a folding chair in a small room, "why did you destroy the Dummy System?"

"You know the answer to why," she responded; this was a whining song she had heard from him three times already, so it was pointless of him to ask her over and over again until she said what he wanted to hear from her. "There's no point in asking me for it."

"Why did you do it?" He stressed.

She sighed and uttered, "You know it wasn't all that important to you. You were going to cast it aside, sooner or later, just like how you cast them all aside. I just did it before you could to rob you of the satisfaction. And they know the truth about her now. They know what you both did to her and why she's so messed up and obsessed with the Hitode woman. I pray to the gods that they leave real soon… And I could care less about what you want or how you feel about this all now. You…never had any hopes or expectations of anyone else to begin with. We're all just stepping stones to you, but you won't be able to walk over us of all and get away from your fate. So do what you will…while you're still alive to do so, that is."

Gendo was infuriated, but he didn't let it show. He simply walked away, leaving her in her prison cell.

"And don't expect me to jump the next time you call, either," he heard her say. "Whatever happens next, you're on your own handling it."

The door slid close, leaving the faux-blond alone in her cell. She had a small smirk on her face; at least she was able to hurt him, even if it was only by a small measure.

 _Whatever happens next…is whatever happens,_ she thought.

-x-

Shinji sat beside Asuka's medical bed, pondering how to speak to her, wondering if she could even hear her while in her unconscious state.

"Ayanami's a monster," he told her. "We, that is Misato, Mr. Kaji, my mother and I, all think it was her that attacked you. She even tried to kill Kensuke. She killed the last Angel, though, so that means NERV has finished what it was tasked with doing. I even confronted her on her hatred towards my mother…as much as I want to make her stop before she can do something that is inevitable, I'd rather take the path of cowardice and just leave with her before Ayanami can go after her."

Asuka did nothing more than lay there in the bed, almost looking like she were asleep instead of in a coma due to a head injury.

"I can't say for certain that it doesn't really stink," he changed the subject, "but being in a coma…is probably preferable to being dead or suffering from a stroke or some other act of cruelty. At least…I hope that it is. Whatever it is that you're dreaming about in there, Asuka…or even just thinking about in there…I hope that it's peaceful. Things out here are only half and half, otherwise I'd spend more time trying to find the good balance. Please, get well soon."

He got up and turned to leave.

If he stayed for another eight minutes and looked at her right hand, he would've noticed the pinky fidgeting a little.

-x-

"…But if all access to and from headquarters has been restricted," went Maya to Fusei, having been the one to inform the incapacitated young woman of the results of the most recent discovery around NERV HQ, "then why are most of the personnel leaving?"

"They're convinced that there's no further reason to stay since the last Angel is gone. I don't blame them, though. Who'd want to continue being associated with a paramilitary agency?"

Maya couldn't answer that question; NERV only existed to deal with the Angels, and nothing beyond that mattered. What was more than that was that NERV would likely be disbanded and the Evas decommissioned, and anyone that had anything to do with NERV would likely be sworn to secrecy and simply forget about everything that happened for the rest of their lives.

"What about you and Shinji?" She asked her.

"Miss Katsuragi has urged me to leave the base with him and vacate the city," Fusei explained. "It would save us both from Ms. Ayanami and Gendo Ikari if we did…so that's why I'm going to do so, but I need to get those that can't vacate on their own accord out of the Geo-Front and city first."

"Which would be only a handful of people that got injured during the Unit-03 incident, including myself and the Fourth Child, and now the Second Child. You could put our safety in the hands of another personnel member, you know."

"I could…but then, there's likely the possibility of a triage situation if I did so. Everyone that still need medical attention needs to be evacuated from here and relocated to the medical facilities located outside the city."

"Then…how soon can everyone that can't move on their own be expected to be relocated?"

"An hour or two. After which, I'll tell Shinji that we should go and wait for the upcoming storm to pass and calm down."

"I wish you both the best of happiness."

"Thank you."

-x-

It was an odd wonder, the real mother of Shinji Ikari showing up and joining NERV to get close to him, but Kaji found her arrival to be the perfect distraction for all of NERV to focus on while he completed what he had set out to do. This, and the broadcast revelation that Kozo Fuyutsuki did that most likely obliterated NERV's less-than-good reputation, gave the unshaven man the time he needed to procure all the information NERV possessed about what had happened before the Angels showed up…and what was expected to happen after they were dealt with.

"…So, that's why they needed these Evas ready for after the Angels were defeated," he said to himself, preparing to distribute the gathered knowledge to every media outlet across the country to spread the truth throughout the world. "Mission accomplished. Time to pack it all up and get out of Dodge."

With the info traveling across the nation at the speed of digital, the unshaven man closed his terminal and retreated into the shadows.

-x-

The city was clearing out at a steady pace, despite the order coming from Gendo that access to and from the Geo-Front was restricted. Nobody really wanted to listen to him, no matter how much in charge of the paramilitary agency he was in; while he might've had authority over NERV, that was during Angel-based situations, not regular people wanting to get away from the city and the base. And several ambulances arrived to relocate the injured personnel members out of the city limits, something Fusei was making sure happened as fast and as steady as possible.

"You're really taking charge, Dr. Hitode," Fusei turned around and saw Kaji staring at the gurneys full of injured men and women being carted by medical personnel from neighboring cities into several ambulances. "Nice work."

"Thank you," she praised him, but gestured that she still had her Taser in her pocket in case she needed it to defend herself from an uninvited attempt on herself, which Kaji got the message and stood back a good three feet. "Shouldn't you be leaving soon? You must have things to do."

"I had to make sure that Asuka was evacuated first."

At that mention of the redhead, a gurney carrying said girl was carted away onto an empty ambulance in front of the two along with Maya Ibuki and Kensuke Aida.

"Ask nicely and you shall receive in due time," said Fusei to him. "That's all of them that can't leave on their own accord. NERV's medical ward is officially empty."

"Okay, people, let's move 'em out of here!" A woman told everyone else driving an ambulance.

Now, all Fusei had to do was tell her son that they were leaving the base and city. But suddenly, she felt a twitch in her heartbeat, like something awful had happened…or was going to happen soon. It had to be her maternal instincts acting up; what else other than her concerns for her child could cause her to feel a sense of impending dread?

"Tell me, Mr. Kaji," she spoke to the unshaven man, "did you see Shinji before you got here?"

"The last I saw of him, he was with Katsuragi on the bridge in Central Dogma," he answered her, and the single mother went back into the base.

-x-

"Scores of NERV personnel are vacating the Geo-Front," said SEELE 11 to the rest of the council. "None of them seem to be aware of the strike team positioned to take NERV through physical force if the attempt to take the base through the MAGI proves ineffective."

"How many personnel members are left?" SEELE 06 asked.

"Based on the number of people that evacuated the city, the number of personnel remaining in NERV HQ…is less than two-hundred, but that number could decrease, as well."

"This just came to me from one of my sources," went SEELE 03 to the council. "The police from Manazuru of the Kanagawa Prefecture have arrived in Tokyo-3 to arrest Ikari."

"Begin the assault on the MAGI," SEELE 01 ordered. "We'll see what happens."

-x-

The alarms in NERV went off like there was during an Angel attack, but Fusei knew that it couldn't have been that; there were no Angels left to fight. She took out her phone and called Misato's number, hoping that Shinji was with her.

"Katsuragi, go," she heard the purple-haired woman's voice respond.

"It's Fusei," she uttered. "I'm on my way to the bridge. What's going on?"

"It's not good. We just got word that an A-801 Order was just issued no more than eight minutes ago."

"An A-801 Order? What does that mean?"

"NERV's legal protection and authority has been officially revoked. Control over the agency has been transferred to the Japanese government."

"This is sudden. They couldn't just send someone to represent the government and explain why?"

"We only received one warning, and it wasn't much of a warning, either."

"Tell me, is Shinji with you?"

"Yeah, he's right here."

"I got a bad feeling that he was in trouble."

"No, he's fine right now."

Fusei hung up as she entered onto the bridge, seeing Misato, Shinji, Hyuga and Shigeru present.

"Then why does my heart refuse to calm down?" She asked Misato.

-x-

Shojiki Ikari, who should've left with the majority of the NERV personnel, being a civilian, chose to stay and wait for the police to arrive and arrest Gendo. He had to see this through to its conclusion and make sure that those left alive that were responsible for the unforgivable crime were apprehended and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Once Gendo was in police custody, he couldn't get loose and cause further discord towards anyone.

Sirens were soon heard as he saw at least eight police cars arriving within the Geo-Front. They stopped in front of Shojiki and out came seventeen officers.

"Shojiki Ikari?" The female officer asked him.

"Yes, ma'am," he answered her. "Are you here for Gendo Ikari?"

"That's right," said one of the male officers to him. "We have the warrant for his immediate arrest for charges on kidnapping and custodial interference."

"That's good. He's inside the building."

He led them inside the steel pyramid to where Gendo usually resided.

-x-

"…Just how many MAGI were built?" Fusei asked Misato as she was trying to hold off a digital assault on the base through the MAGI.

"Seven NERV branches across the globe equals seven MAGI supercomputers," Misato explained. "This is the original MAGI."

"And some would say that the first is the worst. Hopefully, MAGI Balthasar will hold them off for a while with the new code I implemented."

"Just how long is 'a while'?" Shinji questioned.

"Forty hours, give or take."

"That should be long enough to contact the Japanese government and sort this all out properly," Misato told them. _Yet, I don't think whoever wanted to takeover NERV will stop at the MAGI._

Fusei's implemented code to protect the original MAGI was based solely on the other aspects of what made a mother a mother. From her own experience with her mother and her active maternal drive, the young woman's code made Balthasar feel a drive to protect the remaining people within NERV HQ, like they were children in need of their mother's protection, from the dangers of the outside world. If the original creator had installed her own motherly persona into the supercomputer, then the code would make it very protective over the personnel…and even go to the ultimate extreme to protect them.

"Fusei," went Misato to her as she set the keyboard down, "maybe you and Shinji should get out while you still can."

"What about you?" Mother and son both responded, surprising both individuals as the purple-haired woman looked at them.

"It's not like we're going to war with a human enemy," she explained to them. "At least, I hope not. Either way, we're no longer in a position to face the Angels, so there's no reason for the Evas to be used any further. I mean, Shinji, you can walk away from this now. The police are on their way to arrest Commander Ikari for what he and his wife did to you and your family. Go and meet your relatives."

Shinji, as much as he did want to leave with Fusei at that moment, still worried about Misato being here at the base. If it wasn't the idea of people wanting to attack NERV for whatever reasons there were left to have for such, it was what Commander Ikari and Rei Ayanami could do if they weren't apprehended by the authorities. Excluding his friends that were vacated to safety, his mother and she were the only people that he cared about that still resided here and now.

"Don't get killed while you're still here," he told her.

"Believe me, I'd rather die from natural causes than a bullet," she responded, and he and Fusei left.

Then Fusei returned a moment later.

"Seriously, don't get killed," she told Misato, and then ran back out.

-x-

"We're unable to fully take the MAGI," said SEELE 08 to the other members. "It'll be several hours before we can."

"It would seem that this method of assault and the warning NERV was given weren't enough to get them to cooperate," SEELE 01 uttered. "Begin a direct attack on NERV HQ. Disable remaining personnel if possible. Terminate if necessary. Gendo Ikari is the priority target. Eliminate on sight."

-x-

It was a horrid sight to behold. Not only were the tires slashed on Fusei's Prius, its interior had been shot up on the driver's side, rendering it inoperable for driving any distance.

"Son of a…" Fusei uttered, cutting herself off before she finished her sentence.

Shinji walked around the damaged hybrid and noticed a shoe near the back right tire, recognizing it as the type of dress shoe a girl at his school would wear.

"Ayanami," he sighed, picking up the discarded shoe and showing Fusei. "She must've did this with that man."

Although she wanted to express her anger over this possibility, Fusei held her tongue and popped the trunk, pulling out a small, blue knapsack that had been unscathed.

"Shinji, can I ask that you trust me when I say I'll do whatever it takes not to violate the oath I took as a doctor?" She asked her son, opening the knapsack and pulling out a flashlight and three additional mags for her firearm-based Taser.

"I trust you, Mother," he told her, seeing her take out a gun that didn't look like a traditional firearm.

"A next-generation Taser I got a few years back," she explained. "While it has two settings, I won't use the 'kill' setting. The first chance I get, I'm knocking Ms. Ayanami out."

She gave him the flashlight and they walked down the garage back into the base.

Shinji, however, just had a bad feeling that something off-putting was going to happen soon, and the damages done to his mother's car were just an effort to prevent him from leaving the base, despite wanting to the instant the last Angel had been disposed of.

 _I don't know what I once felt towards Ayanami before I found out she wasn't even much of a person,_ he thought, keeping close to Fusei as they entered an elevator, _but I can't delude myself into believing that she won't cross the line and hurt my mother based on the delusion that she's not my mother. Blood may be thicker than water, but right and wrong are just as thick…and whatever Ayanami's thinking, whatever that man's thinking… They're both wrong._

The elevator suddenly stopped and opened up, revealing several men in dark gear, armed with automatic weapons raised at the pair.

"Aaah!" Shinji gasped, and Fusei, just as frightened, stood in front of her son.

"Do you two know where Gendo Ikari currently is?" One of the men asked them.

"No, sir," Fusei answered, not raising her Taser up; there was no way she was going to gamble on who drew quicker than the other. "Are you going to kill us for not knowing?"

"Our orders are to do so only if necessary," explained another soldier to her. "Only if you resist. You're free to leave, though."

"We actually tried to leave. My car was trashed. If you want that good-for-nothing has-been, I would suggest you try looking for a young woman with blue hair. She might know, since it's likely she's the one who ruined my car."

The soldiers then stood aside and permitted the two to vacate the elevator.

"Why are you looking for that man?" Shinji asked one of them.

"We received a tip that he's trying to trigger Third Impact and destroy the human race," he answered. "Our orders are to kill him on sight. Anyone helping him is to either be apprehended or executed."

"I sincerely doubt that he's getting any help from any number of people," said Fusei to them. "He's not one to trust anyone, whether they help him or not. He's…a sociopath."

"Psychologist?" Another soldier asked her.

"Physician and computer expert."

"And the boy?"

"My son."

-x-

It was unexpected, but it wasn't much of a fight after a tear gas grenade was thrown into the bridge on Central Dogma. The soldiers came in and detained everyone there, which was just twenty people, including Misato, Hyuga and Shigeru and explained that their orders were to execute Gendo, not any of them unless they resisted.

"But the police have a warrant out for his arrest," Misato told them. "If they get him, he'll go to jail, and for a long time for what he and his wife did."

"Then it's a race against the clock to see who gets to him first," said one of the soldiers to her. "Can any of you track him?"

"We don't know where he is," answered Hyuga.

"You mean, none of you personnel members have a tracking chip or anything?"

"No," Misato explained. "When it comes to NERV surveillance, priority is to locate the pilots over other individuals."

"Then we need you to locate one of your pilots," another soldier told her. "A fourteen-year-old girl with blue hair."

"Rei Ayanami. The First Child."

"That's right. We just got a tip that Ikari likes to keep her close by."

Even though she had some sympathy for the girl, Misato couldn't forget that Rei Ayanami was hardly a victim if she had a personal beef with Fusei because of two people that were immoral of the disgrace they inflicted on others. And it was only because of the recent revelations surrounding her background that she couldn't trust Gendo wouldn't use the girl to achieve his grand design soon.

"I might know where to find the First Child," she told them, "and Commander Ikari is likely to be with him, as well."

-x-

Being escorted by three soldiers out of the base felt like a new low for Fusei. At least they hadn't hurt Shinji or herself.

BANG! A gunshot was heard and the soldier behind them dropped to the ground.

They turned around and saw a gun pointed at them.

"Get down!" One of the two remaining soldiers ordered Shinji and Fusei, raising their guns up to shoot their attacker.

Shinji looked up…and saw Rei, holding a smoking gun…with a cold expression disturbingly similar to Gendo's right now.

BANG! BANG! She fired again at the remaining soldiers, hitting them both dead in between their eyes, sending them to an early grave.

"The both of you," she spoke to them, "get up and come with me."

"Ayanami," Shinji responded, unable to believe that she just killed three men in front of them, "what are you doing?"

Pointing the gun at Fusei's head, the albino stated, "Cleaning house."

"Now, that's a poor choice of words to use," Fusei told her; she didn't dare reach for her Taser so long as the gun was pointed at her.

"You kill my mother," Shinji went, not liking this act, "and I'll kill you before you get a chance to pull that trigger a second time."

Rei looked at him and uttered, "Then you'd best listen if you value her life above your own."

-x-

"We've found the First Child," went Shigeru as the cameras in the base caught wind of the girl. "I don't believe this."

Even Misato didn't want to believe it. But she couldn't undo what she saw Rei do to the soldiers Rei shot dead before turning her gun on Shinji and Fusei.

"…If you value her life above your own," they heard the girl say to the boy as she pointed her gun at the woman.

"You follow her, you find Commander Ikari," Misato told the soldiers present.

-x-

Shinji had to keep turning back to look at Rei because he didn't trust that she wouldn't just go and shoot his mother out of spite. So far, all she did was point her gun and tell them which way to go in the halls.

Fusei recognized some of where Shinji and she were being led around and wondered why the girl was herding them down to Terminal Dogma.

"Shouldn't you be taking medication, Ms. Ayanami?" She asked her. "I was informed that you were medicated when you were picked to pilot the Eva."

Rei didn't respond to her question. It was an unnecessary question to even answer.

"I guess that's true, then," Fusei expressed her opinion. "You simply do what he tells you to do. And once he gets what he wants, nothing else will matter. Nothing…and no one."

"You know not what you speak of," said Rei back to her, and Fusei turned her head back to look at the albino girl.

"You think I don't know people like this man? Anyone anywhere will always know something about people like this man. Black-hearted, disrespectful, self-centered…and narcissistic."

"What about megalomaniacal?" Shinji added.

"Yeah, that, too."

"This…is simply the way things must play out," Rei told them.

"And what happens to everyone that doesn't agree with the three of you? Or should I ask what becomes of the people left in the world that don't agree with Gendo and Yui Ikari's differing beliefs? And I say 'differing' because any couple are bound to have different views of what they think should happen to the world."

"You once said that the Eva was your link to everyone, but you never elaborated on it," Shinji reminded the girl; although he wasn't even sure he wanted to know what she meant by that, since his own assumption was that there was no way any Evangelion could link any one person to everyone, no matter what was believed. "I'm beginning to doubt your reason for piloting the Eva as being the truth, because there's no way you could ever be linked to everyone through the Eva. That's impossible."

Still, Rei didn't say much about what she was doing in all this. It was simply unnecessary to say anything about it. Once they reached an elevator, she made them step inside and she pressed a button.

 _I don't know what is worse right now,_ thought both the mother and son, _that she's listening to two people that should be incarcerated for their crimes or that she's waving a gun at us?_

Down, down, down they went to Terminal Dogma. When the elevator reached its stop, Rei forced them down a hall and towards a large, sealed door.

CREAK! The door split opened and pulled back, revealing to Shinji and Fusei the colossal body of Lilith, which, according to Ritsuko, was associated to Rei and all known life on Earth, a source of life or worldly mother, similar to how Adam, the designated First Angel, was viewed as the very father of all other Angels after him.

"Welcome," they heard the voice of Gendo speak to them, turning to see him near the edge of the large pool of LCL. "Now that you're here, we can put an end to all of this."

"Put an end to all of this?" Fusei questioned. "To all of what, exactly? The Angels are dead, the city has been emptied of both civilians and NERV personnel, and the base is being overrun by soldiers tasked with finding you, their orders to kill you on sight. You can't walk or talk your way out of the situation, Gendo Rokubungi. The police are likely on their way to deal with you, as well. You should own up to your faults and face the consequences for what you and your wife did."

"I refuse to be locked away for something I wanted nothing to do with," he told them, and took out his gun and raised it at Fusei's head. "And you. You were supposed to be dead when Yui took him. You couldn't just be dead instead of looking dead? Your presence and refusal to keep away from the Third Child has caused nothing but interference!"

Fusei frowned at Gendo, wishing she could reach for her Taser and paralyze the man before he could think of killing either herself or Shinji. Even when he was involved in such a crime, he refused to claim his share of the responsibility for the harm he inflicted. He thought that was exempt from any blame. But she knew that nobody that committed such atrocities were exempt. Nobody was permitted to wash their hands of this.

"What's so special about him to you, anyway?" Gendo asked her. "He's pathetic. He's been this way ever since we took him. Weak, stubborn, questions everything, nothing worth wanting to know or understand about. He never even does what he's told."

"That's your opinion of him, which, even if it's a direct result of his improper upbringing at the hands of you and your in-laws, really means nothing to me," she responded. "He's still my son, and I still want to know everything about him. His likes and dislikes, his hopes and ambitions, even his fears, no matter how minute, childish or even trivial they might be. You and your wife might've robbed me of my past of him as a baby all the way up to the present, but I refuse to let you rob me of a future with him just because you have a depraved god complex and an unwillingness to accept those around you. If you want to be left alone in the world, I would recommend becoming a reclusive hermit, otherwise just get thrown into solitary confinement somewhere. Don't drag everyone else into your drama just because you hate the way things are."

Shinji turned to face Rei, seeing her itching to pull the trigger on her gun at his mother's head.

"Don't you dare, Ayanami," he warned her.

"How can you stand to listen to her voice?" She questioned. "How can you be willing to walk away from NERV with her?"

"That's my choice. I chose to want to leave with her. If you can't accept that, that's on you."

"Well, we can't permit you to leave."

She then aimed her gun at him, which, while raising his sense of tension, didn't make him want to flee for his own life.

"Gendo Ikari!" A man's voice shouted, and a dozen men came into the room, guns raised and aimed at the megalomaniac and the albino girl. "Don't move!"

"Drop your weapons!" Another soldier ordered.

"Shoot him!" A third soldier yelled.

Taking a risk with the distracted pair, Fusei grabbed Shinji and got on the ground.

BANG, BANG, BANG! Bullets were unleashed on Gendo, who didn't so much as try to make a run for his life.

Shinji looked at him…and saw an orange, almost-transparent octagonal wall in front of the man.

 _An AT-Field?_ He was confused, and saw something beyond grotesque: On Gendo's left hand was some sort of…eyeball protruding from the palm.

Then, without any hesitation, Gendo shot at the soldiers.

"Sick," went Fusei, knowing an abomination when she saw it, and the thing in Gendo's hand was just as hideous as he had been since the day she met him after discovering that he and his wife were the culprits responsible for taking Shinji.

"Police!" A new voice shouted. "Don't move!"

"Gendo Ikari, you're under arrest!"

Three police officers came in and aimed at Gendo.

"Drop your weapon!"

But Gendo just got angrier and shot at the police.

"Might I suggest we try and get out of here?" Fusei asked Shinji.

"Yes," he answered back.

Rei, as she was distracted by the soldiers and police that came for Gendo, turned to see Shinji and Fusei getting off the ground and trying to run towards the entrance.

"Stop!" She shouted, raising her pistol up at them.

Fusei, knowing it was between life and death for herself and Shinji, quickly ran towards the albino girl and shoved her into the LCL pool.

Rei lost the gun as she had to swim back to the edge to climb out of the LCL.

Fusei and Shinji ran out while the police and soldiers continued to shoot at Gendo, who couldn't fire any more bullets at them because he ran out in his gun.

"Get back here!" He shouted at them, but they had escaped.

Slash! The AT-Field of Adam went erratic and instead of being defensive became offensive for Gendo, sending the police and soldiers off their feet with the feeling that their internal organs had been mutilated beyond recognition.

As she climbed out of the LCL, Rei couldn't believe that an unnecessary person had assaulted her and got away with Shinji. And worse was that the boy still left with her.

-x-

"…Was that the best way to push a person into a pool?" Shinji asked Fusei as they ran through the hall.

"Only if they know how to swim," she answered.

"Doesn't exactly fit into the oath you took, but I'm okay with that."

But as soon as they ran down a different corridor, the boy began to feel a different level of woe. It felt like danger was approaching.

Fusei felt the same sense of danger nearing.

A light at the end of the hall caught their attention and they came out onto a platform…in front of Evangelion Unit-01.

"Ugh," Shinji and Fusei both shuddered.

The purple Eva was no different from an ill omen of the cruelest of existence. An omen…of Hell brought to Earth.

"Mother," Shinji uttered, "I don't ever want to pilot anything like this ever again."

"I agree with you," she told him. "Accursed demon. Let's get out of here."

Neither wanted anything further to do with the Ikaris' work for as long as they had left to live.

Creak! They heard something, like a large gear moving or a bolt being tightened more than necessary.

They turned towards the Eva. Something seemed different about it, like its head had turned slightly or something else entirely.

"Shinji," went Fusei, letting go of Shinji's hand, "now's a good time for you to run."

The boy got the same feeling that they both needed to run.

"Not without you," he told her, refusing to lose her to anyone or anything. "I can't lose you a second time in my life."

Not even that could silence the woman's maternal instincts.

"Crazy ensues," she told him, and grabbed him, surprising him with how strong she was.

"Whoa!" He gasped, and Fusei ran like Hell out of the chamber.

Creak! He saw Unit-01's head turn, its eyes glowing.

Crash! Fusei felt the floor tremble and ran faster, despite feeling like her son's weight was weighing her down by some ninety pounds, which to her meant that despite eating much, Shinji was still a bit underweight by at least some twenty pounds.

They were out of there before she felt like the walls cracked under pressure.

-x-

With JSSDF soldiers and the police themselves after him, Gendo knew now, more than ever, that he needed to complete his agenda and be reunited with Yui, putting this all behind them for good.

"Rei," he told the albino girl, "we shall begin… Aaurgh!"

He felt a blow to the back of his head, knocking him down.

"I will find Ikari-Kun first," Rei expressed. "I will find him and dispose of the unnecessary woman he won't part from."

She walked out of the chamber and left the unconscious man surrounded by the corpses of his victims.

-x-

"Unit-01 has activated!" Hyuga announced on the bridge, alerting Misato and the soldiers that were there.

"What?!" Misato gasped. "Who's piloting it?"

"Nobody! There's no plug inserted! It's unmanned!"

On the screens, Unit-01 was breaking free of its restraints and moving towards the catapult system, tearing away sections of wall and ground to advance further.

"Do we have eyes on the Third Child?" Misato questioned.

"No, but we have eyes on the First Child," Shigeru responded. "She's in the hall. It looks like she's heading towards the cages."

"There are several more soldiers heading towards Terminal Dogma with more police," added Hyuga. "They're arguing over whose jurisdiction takes precedence over Commander Ikari."

"They can do that after they've properly detained him," Misato sighed, checking the ammunition for her pistol. "Keep me updated if you find where Shinji is."

She then left the bridge, considering herself rather foolish for going to do what she was going to do. But what other alternative did she really have? Does she just wait around Central Dogma for the authorities to apprehend Gendo and incarcerate him for his multitude of crimes…or does she just go to find Shinji and Fusei and make sure they get out of NERV HQ before something worse than what was already happening happens?

 _Even when there are people that want to bring about the end of the world we know, there are just a few people that spend their final moments trying to do something right,_ she thought bitterly, hoping that she didn't have to shoot anyone.

-x-

"…Uh, I think you can put me down now, Mother," said Shinji to Fusei as she carried him down the hall, far from the active Eva.

"Okay, okay," she responded, slowing down and catching her breath, putting her son down. "I didn't see anything, but what did you see?"

"The Eva moved on its own," he revealed. "It just moved on its own."

Of course, they both knew that it wasn't entirely accurate, that the Eva's actions were due to something more dangerous than any glitch in some system.

"Tell me something," he spoke. "Do you know how to hot-wire a car in case we have to get away?"

"Only because your aunt showed me once," she answered, "and only if I had no other alternatives."

Fusei then reached for her Taser and checked the ammunition again.

"Yet, I'm beginning to get the feeling that the powers that be, not just the actions of a miserable couple and a girl that hates me beyond belief, don't want us to leave, even though it's what we want to do."

"Then those powers that be are very cruel towards you. You have a handful of people that want to end the world…and you have most that just want to see the next day."

"And what do you want, Shinji? What does your heart desire?"

Helping her back onto her feet, Shinji answered, "To walk away from this and meet the rest of the family I've yet to see."

They resumed their trek to wherever this hall led, hoping that it would get them away from the violence they were swept in.

-x-

It was just awful, seeing the boy with her, and so heartbreaking to see him want to be with her rather than with them. But even as the soul of the Eva, Yui refused to let these…detours and minor setbacks deter her from accomplishing what she had set out to do. For as long as the Eva still existed, she refused to back down simply because of a life choice she made fourteen years ago had an error she didn't realize until it came back to bite her head off. In her mind, she wasn't wrong about anything, and in her mind, the teenage girl was dead, not asleep or unconscious, so she didn't need a guilty conscience or something of the sort. If this all panned out for them, nothing that had been committed in the past would matter.

And yet, seeing Shinji with the woman that breathed life him into infuriated her because, after all this time, she thought she was dead. And worse was that this revelation had destroyed any semblance of a connection between herself and Shinji, making his presence within the Eva all but entirely worthless.

 _Everything happens as it must,_ she thought, willing the Eva to tear through reinforced steel walls to reach her objective closer. _We no longer need to follow the law of the old gods. We can escape from the bindings of our past and reshape the future. But we need to break free from our shackles first._

In her mind, the original agenda had been compromised by factors beyond her control, but could be adapted to suitable methods to ensure acceptability. If she and Gendo couldn't have any children of their own due to an injury she suffered from before they met, then they just needed someone who could fill in the role of their child. The devastation caused in Tokyo by Second Impact had been an unexpected bonus for their changed plans, since it caused so many deaths…and left so many orphaned children as a consequence. This was what led them to finding Shinji and taking him from what they had thought was a life without a family; even she had thought that the girl, this…Fusei Hitode…was as dead as the other people in the understaffed and overburdened hospital was or was going to be soon.

 _She will regret coming back,_ she swore, intending to make sure the woman she had thought was dead was worse than dying. _I will make sure she can never interfere again._

To be continued…

A/N: Dang, if I constantly do things that make Yui Ikari out as one of the bad guys, it's only because she's as equally wrong and black-hearted as Gendo is for using Shinji in such a cruel manner. If you think I should create another alternate story where she isn't Shinji's mother, please suggest who you think should be his mother in a future story and I'll let you know if I have seen what you suggest.


	14. Held in my arms, but ripped from my life

Creation began on 03-14-18

Creation ended on 03-15-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Held in my arms, but ripped from my life

A/N: Fusei often reflects back upon the moment when she went through the biggest change of her life and the negative repercussions that befell her.

 _Fourth of June, Two-Thousand-One_

It was Two-Thosand-One, the first year of the Twenty-First Century, and Tokyo had been unable to enjoy much of it like the rest of the world should have been able to. The wards were in shambles, some of the buildings either completely destroyed or damaged to the point of uninhabitable, and the people that were living there or just visiting at the time of the devastation were either dead, injured or helping to alleviate some measure of pain and suffering experienced by others.

 _I'd listen to the words he'd say, but in his voice, I heard decay,_ thought the fourteen-year-old Fusei Hitode as she laid on the small cot alongside other women in her condition, staring up at the ceiling instead of at her broken leg or the world around her, reflecting upon the lyrics of an American song she heard back in Nineteen-Nighty-Nine that seemed to fit with her current mood. _The sweetest price you'll have to pay…the day the whole world went away…_

She knew it wasn't anyone's fault that the world was going a bad period of unrest, but it didn't stop her from feeling like a casualty of a sudden war alongside many others that didn't choose to get involved. And then she grimaced a little bit, instantly reminded of how it wasn't just her that occupying the cot, looking away from the ceiling and at her swollen belly…and feeling a tinge of happiness and hope that at least someone in her family would be ignorant of what was going on and would one day see a world being rebuilt where people could laugh and smile.

"Hey, Fusei," she heard a male voice say to her, and she turned to her right and saw her boyfriend and the father of her unborn child, Genshi-teki Katagiri, using a pair of crutches while being aided a little by his brother and her childhood friend, Tetsuo. "How are you so far?"

"So long as I don't move my leg or nothing touches it, I'm good," she answered him. "What about you? You shouldn't be walking."

"He needed to see you," said Tetsuo to her. "The doctors gave him some morphine and told him he could still walk so long as it was short distances."

"What about you? Your arm?"

Tetsuo looked down at his left arm, wrapped in small bandages, and stated the worst was behind him since his two bones would heal with time.

"If he's lucky, they should be able to save his ruptured abdomen in another day or two."

"Genshi-teki?" Fusei asked, concerned for her lover.

"Please," he pleaded to her as he slowly sat down in the chair beside her cot, "don't worry about me. I can endure this agony. I will endure this agony. How is he doing (he places his left hand on her belly)?"

"Shinji just reminded me that life endures," she told them.

"Well, he's probably being optimistic," Tetsuo suggested to the parents-to-be. "You two tend to focus more on the good than the bad."

"Aaah!" They looked over at a woman who was twelve years older than Fusei, clutching onto her swollen belly. "Aaahh!"

Fusei recognized the emotion in her howls of pain; it was the feeling of agony that came whenever a mother-to-be was due to deliver.

"Uh, maybe I should go get your mother and make sure that the doctors supply you with an epidural, Fusei," said Tetsuo to the young couple as he turned to walk away; he had seen the movies and as much as he loved his future sister-in-law, he really didn't want to see any births in real life at the moment.

"Uh, yeah," she agreed with him; she couldn't keep from feeling the pain of childbirth, but she could at least alleviate some of it so that it didn't feel like she was dying or something.

"Just tell me one thing, Fusei," Genshi-teki uttered to her, holding her right hand. "Do you ever regret that I got you pregnant?"

Even just a thought that lasted two seconds was enough to make the young girl say, "No. Why would I regret this? I love you and our baby. There should never be any regret."

"I guess I have the jitters."

"You're not the only one. I…I really want to be a good mother for Shinji."

"Oh, you'll be a great mother."

"Thank you."

-x-

 _Sixth of June, Two-Thousand-One_

She was the only one that hadn't gone into labor yet, and she only just started her recovery from having metal pins inserted into her left leg to keep the bones set as they healed back together. As she slept as peacefully as she could while the other new mothers were caring for their sons and daughters, Fusei grimaced softly as she felt Shinji kick every now and then. It was sometime after midnight and approaching dawn when the young girl felt a hard kick from her unborn child in what felt like her bladder. She knew it wasn't his fault, but sometimes, just sometimes, she wished the baby was a little more considerate towards the fact that she couldn't go to the bathroom with her leg on the mend…and that it was taking her every ounce of effort to hold her bowels close.

Thump. Fusei felt Shinji kick her again, and this time it felt like it was followed by a loose feeling of her bladder; she suspected as she woke up from her slumber that her baby kicked her so hard that he caused her to lose control.

 _You gotta be kidding me, Shinji,_ she thought as she opened her eyes to the blank ceiling ceiling. "Ohh…"

"Are you okay, Fusei?" She heard her mother's voice say to her as the elder woman came into view on her left side.

"No, I was just kicked so hard that I peed myself."

Her mother checked under the blanket and then looked back at her.

"Fusei, dear, you didn't pee," she revealed to her. "Your water just broke."

"What?" The girl asked, now feeling like her belly's innards were tightening up. "Aah!"

"You're in labor, Fusei."

"But I don't have my epidural. I want my epidural, please."

It wasn't until an hour later that Fusei was having a difficult time with her contractions due to being unable to move her left leg, which her sister had to hold so that she didn't move it. Her boyfriend had his left hand crushed by her as she was feeling the need to push…and they both felt like the epidural was either wearing off or Fusei didn't get enough injected into her veins.

"Aaaurgh, can I push now? I want to push, please! This hurts!" She cried, gripping the right side of her cot.

The doctor checked her cervix again and announced that the baby was starting to crown.

"Okay, Fusei, get ready," she told her.

 _I've been ready!_ Her mind yelled.

"Okay, push!"

"Aaugh! Urgh!" Fusei groaned, feeling like something inhumanly large was being passed through her. "Urgh!"

"I see the head! Keep going, Fusei!" The doctor encouraged, though the girl was starting to feel like she was being split in half at the bottom as something was sliding slowly out of her.

"Ooourgh!" She groaned louder before falling back, exhausted.

It felt like a long time had passed before anyone said anything to her. She was totally wiped out of her energy, like she had run ten miles, ten times, or had been drawn and quartered, four times. There was no definite way to describe her childbirth experience.

"Fusei," she heard Genshi-teki's voice, almost like a whisper instead of the full volume it usually was all the time. "Fusei, you did it."

"Huh?" She responded, her mind scattered because of her exhaustion. "What?"

"You did it," she heard her sister say. "You had the baby. Shinji's here. You're a mother now."

"Shinji's…Shinji's here?"

"Yes," her mother told her, holding a small form swaddled in a white blanket. "Here he is."

She never really saw him outside of the sonogram she and Genshi-teki had gotten to make sure that he was developing properly and without any complications. This was her first time meeting Shinji in person…and he was tiny, about the size of a basketball, a little wrinkled and annoyed, crying as the cold and drafty air made contact with his soft skin and wispy strands of dark hair…and the most precious little boy she had ever met. Tears fell from her eyes as she held him for the first time, just happy to meet him.

"Hey, there, Shinji," she greeted him.

-x-

It had only been two days after the birth, but Fusei still had her habit of sleeping through loud noises, but there was at least one noise that her ears were registering to her subconscious so that she did awaken whenever necessary: Her wailing baby boy. Just five minutes after he was held by his mother and father for the first time…and just like four hours after his birth, Shinji had his facial expression scrunched up to indicate that he was hungry again, so Fusei got up and picked him up out of the bassinet and held him against her chest as she pulled out her left breast.

"Here you go, little guy," she told him, still tired, but was willing to endure sleep deprivation to do right by Shinji.

"Fusei?" She heard Genshi-teki's voice, and turned around to look over at a cot five cots away across the large room and saw him struggling to get up.

She quickly got up and carried Shinji over to his father.

"Hey, you shouldn't try to get up now. They're gonna finally fix your insides tomorrow." She reminded him, using her right hand to calmly push him back down onto his pillow. "You need to rest up for your surgery."

"Either I've gotten weaker because of my ruptured abdominal cavity…or your newfound motherhood has made you stronger," he confessed to her.

"No," she assured him. "We're still the same pair we've always been. We just have someone to take care of now."

"Yeah, we do. I never let you let me forget. I love you both very much."

-x-

 _Ripped away_

Crying. Fusei heard Shinji crying again, but something was different about the way he was doing so this time. It was like…a feeling in her heart was telling her that he was in danger or something…and she needed to wake up, to be there for him. Opening her eyes, her vision blurred as she struggled slowly to get up. As her vision corrected a little, she saw an obscured shadow.

No. It was two shadows…and one of them had Shinji in their grasp, receding into the distance away from her. Something…or someone…was taking her baby away.

"No…" She uttered, but it was so low, it wasn't heard by anyone around her. "Stop… Don't take him away from me…"

Crash! A noise from across the room was made, and Fusei saw that a man had fallen from his cot and onto the floor.

"Help!" It was Genshi-teki that cried. "My son! Someone took my son!"

By the time any security or medical personnel came, eight minutes had passed…and nobody found or even bothered to look for anyone with a baby that wasn't there. And the second worst thing to befall the two families that were upset about the kidnapping was the personal loss of Genshi-teki; because of his attempt to get up and stop the snatching of their child, his ruptured innards were exasperated further, causing severe internal bleeding he couldn't be saved from.

Genshi-teki…died in Fusei's arms, wondering why anyone would want to just take Shinji from them.

" _I saw someone walking away with a baby in their arms,"_ Tetsuo had reported to the police; he had been on his way back to see the three after departing the bathroom when he saw a pair of people walking out of the room like they had done something wrong to someone else and we're trying to get away. _"One was a woman, probably in her twenties, with pageboy hair. The other was an older man, probably in his thirties, not a friendly face."_

Even if the police were able to find the people that were responsible, there was no guarantee that Shinji would likely be with them. There were too many factors, too many reasons for why, and not enough answers to the question being asked. And finding someone, even in a damaged world like today, could take years, especially when it's a newborn.

Fusei and the others were basically being given the sour version of the possibility that Shinji was going to be listed as a missing person for a long time. It wrought the teenage mother with woe over her son's fate. She lost her father, her grandfather, her boyfriend and now she lost her son.

" _Fusei,"_ Tetsuo told her, swearing to her a promise that day, _"we have to do whatever we can to find Shinji. For as long as it takes. We find him and bring him home."_

-x-

 _Present Day Promise Kept_

With her achieving her dream of being an expert in computers and taking on her boyfriend's desire to be a doctor (though the route she took was directed towards young people, children) and his brother, her best friend taking the path of a genetic analyst with the revelation of being able to find people through the use of DNA, Fusei, well into her thirtieth year of life, had gone through year after year after year ever since that horrid and unforgivable day, rebuilding her life and trying to find her son, already in his fourteenth year of life, trying to hold onto the hope that Shinji was alive. There were times where she wanted to stop, to give up hope, to just crawl into some hole somewhere and wait for the end of her life, but her mother, sister, Tetsuo and friends kept pushing her to never give up on what she wanted most out of her life. If she gave up, the people that wronged her and Genshi-teki would win…and Shinji would never know who his real family was. Ever.

And here she was, following another possible lead that could lead to finding Shinji. Tetsuo had done further genetic research and rechecked previous cases of missing or adopted Japanese children going back over ten years and found that none of the male children had the same blood type as Fusei, who would have the primary source of DNA in any child that she bore, meaning that this new lead he found for her, a boy by the name of Shinji Ikari, was another possibility. All she needed to do was get a sample of his DNA, either his blood or saliva, and Tetsuo could compare it with hers for a mitochondrial match. The precautionary reason for checking the DNA was also to confirm the accuracy of identifying blood types because of a three-year-old discovery that revealed the falsifying of several people over the years which led to several near-deaths due to misidentified blood types during transfusions.

 _Tetsuo has been going dozens of files of young men under various names and DOBs ever since he graduated from college,_ she thought, looking at the file and wanting to truly believe that this Shinji Ikari was her son. _If this search pans out, then it has to mean that the Ikaris were the ones that took him away from us. And if so, the question becomes why. Why did they take him? We don't even know these people, and it's like they hate us. There were several other newborn children there that day, and they could've taken any of them, too, but instead, they chose our son, Genshi-teki. Was it a crime of passion? A crime of desperation? I mean, were they trying to gather random children to sell on the black market? Tetsuo has already exhausted the list of deceased children and made many checks to ensure that none of them were him. Kami, this must be the eighteenth time I've gone crazy over possible scenarios that stress me out. Calm down, Fusei. Nothing has been proven yet. You have to meet this boy…and just hope for the best that your prayers will be answered by gods. And this feeling in my heart…it tells me that he's still alive out there somewhere._

Her last good memory of Shinji was when she, Genshi-teki and he were just sitting on her cot while her sister took a picture of them on her cell phone. Sometimes, it still felt like only the day before when she went into labor and gave birth and started breastfeeding him. She didn't have anything planned out with Genshi-teki over their future with Shinji; they just wanted to wait until after he was born to get married and then just be a family wherever they could and go on with their lives. Maybe she was fourteen years too late to be a mother to her kid, but maybe she could still be involved in his life in some way.

She owed it to her and Genshi-teki's families to be a part of his future, regardless of the kind of person he had become over the years.

"Please, let us find him," she uttered to herself as she got into her Prius and started the trek to Tokyo-3 where this Shinji Ikari was reported to be living.

To be continued…

A/N: Well, now we have the past to a degree from the point of view of those wronged by the Ikaris. All that's needed now is to reshape the future.


	15. To Unite or Stay Divided

Creation began on 11-12-17

Creation ended on 06-03-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

To Unite or Stay Divided

Coming to after what felt like a brief while of unconsciousness, Gendo found himself lopped against a wall, bound and gagged with handcuffs and rope.

"Mmm!" He grunted, seeing police officers and soldiers different from the ones he had murdered, standing less than two feet from him.

One of the police then approached him and pointed a gun at him.

"Gendo Ikari, you're under arrest for First-Degree Kidnapping, Custodial Interference and endangering the welfare of a minor…among other charges of conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder and murder. You have the right to remain silent…and you should take advantage of that right since you're gagged. Anything you try to do will be held against you during your trial as you rot in custody."

He couldn't believe this! There was no way he could end this way, getting knocked out and left alone by Rei, only to be apprehended by the authorities! He refused to accept this!

"I wouldn't bother with trying to get loose," said a soldier to him, holding up a small bag with a biohazard symbol. "We cut that thing out of your hand."

-x-

"They have Commander Ikari detained," Shigeru informed Misato on her cell phone. "He's being removed from the base."

"Good," she responded, though really wanted to know where Shinji and Fusei were. _Come on, you two, get out of here. Get to safety, away from NERV._

-x-

Fusei didn't want to think about it, but she got the feeling that Misato was going to can her for hot-wiring her car to try and escape from Rei and Unit-01. The worst part was that the blue Renault was the only other car within the parking garage.

Shinji, despite the trouble they were, managed to find it in him to put his seatbelt on.

Screech! Fusei stopped the car at the sight in front them.

"She doesn't know when to give up," she uttered, and Shinji looked up and saw Rei, blocking the path to the next floor going up.

"Come with me, Ikari-Kun," Rei uttered, holding up a pistol aimed at them. "Don't make this worse than it is already."

Shinji and Fusei looked at each other before Shinji gestured his head towards her seatbelt.

"First do no harm, Mother," he told her.

"Hold on tight," she responded as she buckled up. "This ain't the only way out."

She revved up and accelerated…in reverse!

Rei opened fire on the Renault, leaving three holes in the window.

The car turned around, shifted gears and drove down the long way to the other entrance to the next floor leading out.

"You can't run forever, Ikari-Kun!" Rei yelled.

-x-

Unit-01 smashed its way through the pens and towards a catapult system, where it began to levitate upwards to the surface of the Geo-Front. The thoughts running through the soul of the woman within the Eva being those of finding the boy that was trying to get away from her with the other woman that refused to leave him alone and follow the path she had intended for him to take.

 _Shinji,_ went Yui as the purple Eva tore through the shutters that kept it from going on. _Even if you wanted to leave with her, we're past the point of no return. It is either this…or we all return to nothingness, back to before._

Anyone who had seen Yui before she became the resident ghost in the shell would have said what was most likely a cruel truth that couldn't be ignored: The woman had clearly lost her conscience towards what was right and what was wrong, only able to see how much the situation affected herself.

 _Fusei Hitode, I will make you wish you never chose to find Shinji._

-x-

Screech! Fusei stopped Misato's car as she and Shinji reached the surface of the Geo-Front.

So far, there was no sign of Rei or Gendo, and Fusei wouldn't have minded it staying that way.

Rumble. They heard and felt the ground beneath them.

"I don't like the sound of that sound," said Shinji

"Likewise," she agreed with him, and accelerated again towards the linear express elevator to escape.

Crack! The ground in front of them split open and released a giant, purple hand!

"Gaah!" They gasped, causing Fusei to hit the breaks.

 _What the Hell is wrong with this woman?!_ She wondered.

Smash! Another large hand burst from the ground.

Screech! The Renault pulled back as the head of Unit-01 emerged from under the base.

"Rrrraaugh!" The cybernetic behemoth roared.

-x-

"Unit-01 has broken through the surface of the base," Shigeru informed Misato.

"I know," responded the purple-haired woman, "I can see it myself."

-x-

It had been a long time since Shinji had ever known fear from something he had little understanding of, but that was back when he was forced to fight monsters out to end the human race. This time, he was terrified of the very thing that was once used by him, possessed by a woman he was duped into believing was his mother, now out to get the both of them before they could leave.

"She won't let us leave, no matter how much we want to," he uttered.

"She can have ten different degrees for ten different fields, and she still wouldn't have any rights to do what she's trying to do," Fusei expressed as the Eva pulled itself further out of the ground. _Genshi-teki, Tetsuo, Shinko-Kinomi, Mother… I'm hoping to see light at the end of the tunnel right now. Any degree of a miracle that praying to you can spare Shinji and I._

The Eva loomed over the Renault and made an attempt to reach for it with its right hand.

Until…

Thunk! Something small hit the Eva's had…and all eyes were on the metallic pyramid of NERV HQ.

"Hey!" Shojiki Ikari shouted, throwing one of his shoes at the Eva. "Hey, Yui!"

The Eva looked at him and the soul within it was surprised that her father was here, of all places. She had never seen him with such an expression of anger on him in years.

"That's enough!" He yelled at the Eva. "You and your husband have disgraced and embarrassed us all long enough, Yui! Look at what you've done!"

Behind him was Misato, the police, several soldiers and a restrained Gendo.

"Is this really what you want? Huh? Is this really what you want?" Shojiki demanded from his eldest daughter. "Not like this! Never like this!"

The purple behemoth looked down at him, and for a moment, time seemed to stand still for everyone else present.

Shojiki thought back to the days when his girls were still little and hadn't exhibited any disrespectful behavior towards others, back when Second Impact was a thought beyond people's minds. Maybe he wasn't sure if he could've done better with Yui, but even he didn't approve of any of her choices regarding family and children. He didn't approve of her husband, the fact that they took advantage of the devastation a man-made disaster of unforgivable proportions had caused the world in order to commit a kidnapping that ruined two families and killed one of their members, not even how Yui, who claimed to believe in the good in people and their will to live, didn't seem to demonstrate her beliefs herself. It was just one disgrace after another, and he doubted he himself would be forgiven for his own ignorance and failure as a parent when he breathed his final breath.

 _Even if I'm absolved by the kami, there will still be a price to pay,_ he thought.

SLAM! Unit-01 brought its right hand down…and everyone that saw what it had done was shocked by the outcome.

"Oh, Kami," Fusei gasped, wishing it hadn't happened, shifting gears to get Shinji and herself out of there right now.

Shinji, also wishing that he could've unseen that horror, couldn't believe how the Eva had demonstrated its capability to be used as a…killer.

Shojiki Ikari…was crushed to death under the Eva's hand, killed by the soul of his own daughter.

SCREECH! Misato's Renault burned rubber as it drove in reverse.

The Eva climbed out completely from the hole and set its sights on the blue car.

"Grrr," it growled.

-x-

Misato couldn't believe that Unit-01, unmanned and unchecked, had killed an unarmed man without so much as an order or justifiable excuse to do so.

"Orders, Major?" A female personnel member asked her.

"Arm the base's self-destruct system," she ordered; whatever the Eva was planning, she hoped that a destroyed Geo-Front would hinder the cybernetic giant. "We have thirty minutes to vacate the base and get to Tokyo-3."

"Attention, whoever's left within the base," Huyga announced over the loudspeakers. "Unit-01 has gone rogue and NERV HQ has initiated the self-destruct sequence. You have thirty minutes to evacuate the base and get to Tokyo-3! I repeat, the base must be evacuated before thirty minutes have passed!"

It was hoped that thirty minutes would be enough time for everyone to get to safety…and that the explosions created would cause significant damage to Unit-01, maybe even destroying it permanently.

-x-

The Eva didn't relent chasing after the Renault. Not even if Fusei was an experienced race car driver or spent her entire life in the business of street racing would the Eva give up on going after the boy that was with her.

"Damn it," said Fusei, turning the car left to avoid being scooped up by Unit-01. _I won't let you take him again, Yui Ikari._

The tunnel in front of them was within reach; with the elevators not an option, the underground roads leading in and out of the Geo-Front were the only alternative. If they made it into one, the Eva would be hindered or almost incapable of breaking completely through several layers and feet of reinforced steel and concrete.

Fusei sped up, focused on getting to the tunnel and Shinji away from the base before it could detonate. She looked over at Shinji, who looked back at her, and gave a small smile.

"Hold on tight, Shinji," she told him.

"Yes, Mother," he responded, gripping onto the seatbelt.

She gripped the steering wheel and hunkered down. It was all or nothing to get away.

CRASH! The ground shattered beneath the car…and the cause of it being the arms of Unit-01 causing a tremor that destroyed the car's escape attempt and sent it flying.

The car flipped over and smashed against a tree.

"Ah…" Fusei groaned as she looked at the roof under her head. "Shinji?"

"Ohh…" Shinji responded, slowly turning his head to face her, revealing his forehead had a gash on it, blood beginning to seep out. "My head…"

It was probably a concussion, or a possible skull fracture. Either way, Shinji was going to be feeling pain in his head for a while. But because he was wearing his seatbelt, the injury he sustained was limited to just his head.

Crunk! The car made a creaking sound as it was moved.

"Shinji!" Fusei panicked, reaching for his arm as the vehicle turned over, allowing them a view that was horrid. "Damn you. Damn you."

Unit-01 was now holding the damaged car, looking at its injured occupants.

"Mother," Shinji uttered, looking up from under the blood spilling over his eyes. "We're going to get out of this."

Fusei believed him, but the question of how they were going to get out of this situation was beyond her.

Unit-01 then carried the damaged car back into the giant hole, intent of taking them to Terminal Dogma where Lilith resided.

-x-

"Son of a…" Misato went as she saw Unit-01 take her totaled car with it back into the hole. "Get Unit-02 ready."

"What?!" Hyuga gasped. "But we don't have anyone left to pilot it! Asuka's not here!"

"We won't use children," she explained to him as she turned away. "We'll use the Dummy System."

-x-

She heard a beeping sound, voices she couldn't make out, something about an erratic heartbeat or something.

"…Needs a heart… Slow it…"

She didn't understand what was going on. Suddenly, she felt like a small jolt of electricity was sent through her heart, forcing her eyes open.

Gasp! The luminescent lighting above her head and the sight of two EMTs looking down at her did the very opposite of reassuring her.

They worried her.

"What…what is…going on?" Asuka demanded, sounding out of breath.

"Ma'am, try to remain calm," the male EMT instructed her. "You just came out of a coma. Breathe."

Asuka did as instructed, and realized that they were moving.

"Where…where am I?" She asked.

"An ambulance," the female EMT answered. "We've left Tokyo-3 and are heading to the nearest medical center."

All she could recall was feeling like she had struck on the back of her head and falling down. The rest of anything that occurred after is a blur for her.

"Shinji… Fusei… Where are they? Did they get out of the city?" She asked, recalling that they hadn't left before she was incapacitated.

"Nobody by those names was on the list of those in NERV or Tokyo-3 that were evacuated, miss," the male EMT responded.

Asuka feared for the worst now. If neither the boy or his mother had left the fortress city, then it was possible that they were still in danger if the First Child or even Commander Ikari were hanging around. But there was nothing she could do for either, as they were over there…and she was somewhere in between there and some medical treatment center. She didn't even have her cell phone to call them.

-x-

"…You really believe a salvaged Dummy Plug in Unit-02 will be able to stop Unit-01?" Ritsuko, who was released on Misato's orders, asked the purple-haired woman as the few workers left were preparing the red Eva for launch. "You should've just left the base."

"Unfortunately, factors beyond our control kept Shinji and Fusei from leaving," Misato explained. "Commander Ikari, Rei Ayanami and Unit-01…or rather, Yui Ikari, stopped them at every corner, and Yui murdered her own father with Unit-01. If Unit-02 can keep Unit-01 distracted or even damage it, they could get away."

"There's only twenty-three minutes left before the base detonates. How were you able to authorize it without the MAGI causing a hindrance? I had expected one of them to act against detonation."

"I guess we have Fusei to thank for that. Her work on the MAGI made it more efficient to work with."

"Okay, here goes nothing."

Typing in the required codes to activate the red Eva, Ritsuko actually prayed that this plan worked.

"You better get out of here while you still can," Misato told her. "Commander Ikari had you incarcerated, but he's no longer in charge. You can leave now."

"What of you?"

"I gotta make sure those two get out before I do."

On the screens, Unit-02 activated and the Dummy Plug inside began its new instruction protocol: Target Unit-01, disable or destroy.

-x-

Terminal Dogma had been cleared out of any human presence, leaving only Rei Ayanami, who waited for Unit-01 to show up.

SLAM! She heard a loud footstep and turned to the large hole in the ceiling where Unit-01 had just entered the chamber.

The Eva then lowered and set the damaged car down, revealing Fusei and Shinji.

"This time, escape is impossible," she told the two as they both stumbled out.

Shinji looked up from on the ground and at the albino girl. He sighed at the once-mysterious beauty that had mystified him to a degree before it was revealed how damaged…and inhuman she really was. Now, instead of being attracted to her like he had been a little bit, but without any romantic feelings, he just felt pity…and resentment towards her. And then, he slowly got up with his mother.

"What, exactly, is the point of any of this, Ayanami?" He asked her.

"Uniting all human beings," she answered him. "Like I said before, the Eva is my link to all mankind."

"That's not a link," expressed Fusei to her. "That's just depravity. You can't be linked to everyone. It is impossible. Only the kami may be linked to everyone."

"Wrong. Human Instrumentality, the very same project your father strove for, will unite all human souls together, thereby saving mankind. We'll be unified…and a bright future will be in store for us."

Shinji wiped his forehead of his blood and nodded in the negative.

"You're crazy," Fusei called her, feeling like her legs were ready to give out if she didn't move them.

Rei then pointed her gun at them…and then to the pool of LCL and Lilith.

"Get into the pool," she ordered them.

"No, Ayanami," Shinji responded, wiping the blood away from his brow again. "We're leaving, one way or another."

"Don't make me kill her," she threatened him.

"Then I'll just carry her body out and leave you all the same. I don't believe that what you say will save everyone. Not like this, Ayanami. Not like this…and I'd rather suffer a fate worse than that of death than have my soul smashed together with those of other people's souls. Even if it were true that that would save people, you'd be doing so without their consent to do so. You don't have mine, and you don't have my mother's. You still want to do it, you live with the consequences for your decision."

"If you so much as try to leave," Rei yelled as they turned away, "she will crush her!"

Fusei looked up at the Eva, but then looked at her son. It seemed hopeless right now to simply think that they could just walk away…but that was what they aimed to do. One way or another, they were going to leave.

"Can you still walk, Shinji?" She asked him.

"Can you?"

"One step at a time."

The pair started to progress toward the entrance to the chamber, infuriating Rei.

"I'll shoot you, Ikari-Kun! I'll shoot that woman!" She yelled at them. "Stop!"

But they just kept on walking, which kept upsetting the albino.

"I swear I will! I'll shoot the both of you!" She iterated again.

"Grr!" Unit-01 growled, and began to reach down upon the pair.

Shinji looked up and reacted with panic as he tried to move faster with Fusei.

CRASH! Something smashed into the chamber and the three saw Unit-02!

The red behemoth showed up…and began to attack Unit-01!

"Unit-02?" Fusei uttered. "But…Asuka was sent away with the rest of the injured."

"Let's not stick around to find out how," said Shinji to her, and she agreed with him.

BANG! BANG! Shinji felt the world around him slow to a crawl, the noise fading down as his legs gave out.

Fusei, wishing she hadn't taken her eyes off of Rei, fell with her son…and coughed up blood. And then, she felt him being dragged away from her.

"Shinji? Shinji?" She called out as she struggled to get up, feeling the stinging sensation of the gunshot wound inflicted upon her left side as she turned around, seeing said boy being pulled away towards the pool of LCL by Rei.

"I warned you," the albino uttered. "I told you not to walk away from me. This will all end, one way or another, whether you agree with me or not."

Fusei groaned as she tried to walk back towards the girl; she might've still lived under the oath to do no harm, but this girl shot her son…and her maternal instincts were now instructing her to forget the oath and inflict justifiable pain upon the girl.

"Aya…Ayanami?" Shinji uttered, looking up at the girl, wondering if she had shot him in waist or the back. "You're a monster…just like they are."

Dragging him to the edge of the pool, Rei looked at Fusei as she came by and wished she hadn't run out of bullets in her gun.

"None of this would've happened…had you never shown up to take Ikari-Kun away," she told her.

"Had those two never taken him to begin with," Fusei retorted, standing up her full height, "none of us would be here."

And then…Rei kicked Shinji into the pool. The boy didn't try to flail. Instead, he just started to sink.

"Shinji!" Fusei yelled, and shoved Rei aside to jump in after Shinji.

With that done, Rei looked up at Lilith…and levitated upwards to meet her.

"I'm home," she announced.

To be continued…

A/N: I don't know for sure, but if the next chapter isn't the final one, only time will say. Enjoy this one for now and tell me what you think will happen before the final act comes out. Peace.


	16. Family

Creation began on 06-03-18

Creation ended on 08-16-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Family

 _Shizuoka Memorial Hospital_

Asuka Langley Soryu walked down the hall to the recovery ward where she heard Misato was, thinking the woman was injured after she herself had been admitted to this place only four days ago, only to see that said purple-haired woman was standing outside a private room, unscathed.

"Misato," she called out to her. "What the heck happened over there?"

"A lot happened at NERV when we were preparing to leave the base," she explained, somewhat cryptically. "The world almost ended when things got from bad to worse."

Asuka looked through the observation window beside them and looked at the young woman in there that seemed sedated.

"What exactly happened?" She iterated, wanting clarity, wanting to know the outcome of the situation that had been, without a doubt, tragic.

-x-

 _Escaping Terminal Dogma_

There was only twelve minutes left before the entire base detonated and every last trace of NERV was buried, along with anyone that was unable to get away. Twelve minutes before the paramilitary agency was destroyed beyond any degree of salvaging.

Misato had arrived just in time to watch as Rei Ayanami was absorbed into Lilith, completing her form and breaking free of her restraints.

"Shinji! Fusei!" She yelled, running over to the pool, ignoring the fact that Lilith was leaning over and her feet falling in, the mask slowly dropping away from her head. "Shinji! Fusei!"

Deep beneath the surface of the pool, Fusei, sickened by the stench and taste of the LCL ever since discovering that it was really the blood of Lilith, reached out for Shinji as he sank further than she did.

 _I'm coming, Shinji!_ Her mind yelled out, grabbing his right leg.

Shinji, barely conscious, felt himself slipping from the world. He didn't even feel his mother grabbing his leg. He could still register the pain his body felt from getting shot, but everything else was registering as something else entirely. Sight and sound were fading away and he knew something was wrong, but he couldn't do anything about it.

 _Is this…dying?_ He wondered, feeling himself being turned or rotated, seeing an obscured face. _Who is this? I can't remember._

His mind recalled a day where he was reprimanded by his aunt for fighting with his cousin (at least, back when he believed that they were his aunt and cousin)…and the woman expressed her disgust towards the boy because she claimed he was just like her sister and brother-in-law. Then, a memory of rain and false accusation over a bike left in a garbage heap came to mind. The children that offered false friendship, the adults that spoke behind his back about that bad man and his wife, it seemed as though his very childhood was that of pain and the inability to connect or relate to others.

 _Why now?_ He thought, and a possible explanation came to mind. _Is this true? Your life flashes before your eyes as you know you're going to die?_

If this was true, then Shinji knew something from his own past…and it was nothing but hurt because everyone were led to believe that he was a terrible couple's child. This meant he was going to die because of them.

A bright light shone in front of his eyes, revealing a face contorted by a sense of dread. He felt a series of small hits to his chest. Was someone kissing him repeatedly after each series of hits? Shinji couldn't get his thoughts together, and he couldn't see much of anything beyond the light.

"…Shinji…on…here…promise you…please…" A voice uttered, but he couldn't hear it.

Slowly, his eyes closed…and he found himself elsewhere…in front of a man that looked familiar.

"Shinji," he spoke to him, his voice that of kindness and love, "don't give up on life just yet. Your mother still needs you. She spent your whole life trying to find you. She can't lose you now."

The man didn't just look familiar to Shinji; he looked as though he were an older teen version of himself…and remembered something that Fusei had told him.

"Are you…Genshi-teki? Genshi-teki Katagiri?" He asked him.

"I am, Shinji," the older boy answered. "It's nice to meet you after so many years, but you can't stay here. You have to go back."

"Am I dead?"

"Not yet, but you're close to being so."

"Ayanami, the girl that threatened to shoot us if we turned to leave, she shot us. Then, she threw me into this pool. I don't know what happened after that."

"Your mother pulled you out the pool and is currently trying to revive you, which is why you need to go back to her. You can't stay here."

"But…there's something I need to know, please," Shinji begged his true father, feeling himself slipping away from where he was right now. "Will we be able to get away from the threat on our lives? Will we see you again?"

As a gathering of mist came and crept up from the ground around them, Genshi-teki simply smiled and slowly approached his son…and then hugged him for the first time in his life.

"We'll meet again someday, but for now, you have to go back and live. Live for your mother, for me and for yourself."

Then, he felt himself losing consciousness again…and blacked out.

And then, he coughed.

Cough, cough! He spat out the LCL that was in his lungs as his head turned to his right, air getting into them to revitalize him.

"Oh, God," he heard Fusei gasp, holding his upper body up to herself. "Breathe, Shinji. I got you."

He still felt some pain in him, but having her hold onto him was enough to alleviate his discomfort.

"Come on, you two," he heard Misato, "let's get out of here."

"Stay…" They heard Rei's voice, struggling to speak. "Stay…"

Slam! Unit-01 had slammed Unit-02 onto the ground, its horn broken off its armored head.

The red Eva struggled underneath it to continue its Dummy System programming, but the purple one was clearly stronger and more vicious.

Fusei suspected that this had something to do with how Yui's contact experiment was more extreme than Asuka's mother's contact experiment had been; the former didn't fight back against being absorbed into the incomplete behemoth while the latter had installed would-be safety measures to keep absorption from happening, only to still suffer.

 _I'm sorry, Ms. Soryu,_ she apologized to the woman trapped within Unit-02.

The red Eva still struggled to fight back against the purple one, until said Eva snapped the red one's neck, defeating it.

"Fusei?" Misato went, helping the woman carry Shinji out.

"Yeah, Misato?" She responded.

"We're done for, aren't we?"

Looking back and forth between Unit-01 and Lilith, the young mother worried over which fate was the worst one acceptable over the other: Stripped of individuality and free will…or blown away while buried under several thousand tons of steel and concrete. Either way, neither fate was a guarantee of getting away from NERV.

"Attention," the machine voice of the base uttered. "You now have two minutes to reach minimum safe distance from the Geo-Front. Repeat: You now have two minutes to reach minimum safe distance from the Geo-Front."

 _Even if we were able to get away from these two, we wouldn't get out of here in time,_ thought Misato, desperate for other alternates to their situation.

"I think we are done for, Misato," Fusei answered the woman's question regarding their fate.

"Self-destruction of NERV HQ shall commence in ten seconds," the voice informed them. "Nine…eight…seven…six…"

Fusei held Shinji and told him to close his eyes.

Misato decided to close her eyes and prepare for the end of her life.

"Four…three…two…one."

The base was set to pop…but nothing happened. There wasn't even a rumbling noise elsewhere within the base. They waited for a while longer, but nothing occurred. No explosions, no crashing sounds, nothing. The base was still standing.

"I don't believe this," Misato uttered, frustrated. "Everyone must've been deceived."

"What do you mean?" Fusei and Shinji asked her.

"Everyone was informed that if it came to it, NERV HQ was wired with explosives to destroy it should any Angel ever make it down here. But if the countdown was set and nothing has happened, then it means only thing: There aren't any explosives or the explosives are just duds."

"Duds?" Fusei questioned, angered. _This is bullshit! That means the only fate worse than Human Instrumentality is just dying down here trying to get away._

-x-

Ritsuko didn't flee the base, deciding to stick around until Misato Fusei and Shinji had gotten away, but the base didn't explode, even though it was supposed to.

"Goddamn you, Gendo!" She shouted, grabbing a keyboard and typing some code segments. "You lied to us! The base was never meant to self-destruct! You just wanted to scare us, you arrogant bastard!"

Now that the truth was exposed and NERV HQ wasn't going to explode even if they waited until her thirty-seventh birthday, Ritsuko had to find a way to remedy the situation Misato, Fusei and Shinji were in…and maybe she knew of a way.

-x-

Unit-01 was about to grab the three when Unit-02, despite its neck being broken, rose back up and growled at the purple behemoth.

"Unit-02 is still alive?" Fusei asked, confused. "How is this possible?"

"I haven't the slightest clue," Misato responded.

Ring-ring! Misato's phone rang and she answered it.

"Get out of there while you still can," she heard Ritsuko's voice. "I'm sending in Unit-03 to engage Unit-01 and buy you some time to escape."

"But Unit-03 wasn't checked for any residual contamination!" She gasped.

"Actually, it was," Fusei revealed. "I helped to check it. It's clear of contamination."

The red Eva grabbed its head and snapped it back into place before charging towards the purple Eva.

"Grraurgh!" It howled, its arms outstretched as it prepared to engage Unit-01.

CLASH! They collided, but Unit-01 held its ground against Unit-02.

Shinji looked up at Lilith, seeing that its head had now taken on the features of Rei Ayanami, whose face was just an imitation of Yui Ikari's, and gasped.

"We need to go," he told them. "Now!"

Lilith turned to face them…and smiled. She reached down towards them with her right hand.

"Aaah!" Misato gasped, but all three were grabbed by the colossal being.

"Stay," she spoke in Rei's voice.

CRASH! A section of Terminal Dogma's walls fell forward, revealing a Dummy Plug-operated Evangelion Unit-03.

"Rrraurgh!" It roared, running towards them.

Fusei and Misato closed their eyes, not wanting to see what happened next.

Crunch! Something that sounded like it was being broken was heard, and Shinji felt something wet splatter across his face.

The three looked…and saw Unit-03 had ripped Lilith's arm from its body.

"Urgh!" They all groaned, disgusted.

The black Eva then grabbed the hand of the severed hand and ripped away the fingers before said limb developed a death grip, freeing them.

"Way to go, Fusei," Misato told the woman, referring to her coding in the Dummy System.

"Praise later," she responded, helping Shinji to walk. "Run now."

Unit-01 knocked aside Unit-02 and proceeded to approach the three again.

BASH! Unit-03 tackled the purple behemoth to the ground and permitted the three to get away.

"Stay!" Lilith shouted, reaching down with her left arm. "Stay…and die."

"Gah!" Shinji coughed.

Again, the three were grabbed by Lilith and held up in the air.

"Shinji, look at me," Fusei groaned, seeing him cough out blood. "Shinji!"

"This…hurts," he uttered weakly.

Then Lilith suspended her arm over the LCL…and dunked the three into it where she tightened her grip, intending to end their physical lives while their souls would be the first to be absorbed into her!

It didn't matter if LCL was a breathable liquid while conscious, as Fusei could see her son's head tilting back as he was being crushed beside her and Misato; an injured body immersed in the fluid while being injured further would just feel suffocation.

"Shinji," she uttered, struggling to free at least one of her arms. "I could never give up on finding you, Shinji. In my heart, I knew you were still alive. In my heart, I always knew I'd find you one day."

Finally, freeing her left arm from Lilith's grip, Fusei reached over and grabbed Shinji's head, bringing him over to lay it on her chest.

"M… Mother," he uttered, feeling like his vision was dimming.

A large, purple hand reached into the pool and grabbed the hand of Lilith, tightening the grip she had on the three; Unit-01 had finished fighting with Units-02 and 03 and now its resident soul desired what it had spent the better part of a decade preparing for.

"Gaah!" Fusei gasped as she felt like her bones were being crushed as the head of Unit-01 plunged into the LCL. "Yui…you can't have him. He'll never be yours. Do you really think…that just because you take someone else's child…because you feared you couldn't have any of your own, that makes you a qualified parent? Not even close. You didn't even go through the legal channels. You just… You just took him from my boyfriend and I. No matter what you do, you can never make him yours, and you left him to play ghost in the shell in Two-Thousand-Four! Two-Thousand-Four! He was only three years old! And you left him alone! You and your husband left him alone! What the Hell were you thinking?!"

The Eva bared its teeth at the woman.

"Did you really even put Shinji first?" Fusei questioned, refusing to show fear to Yui just because she was currently inhabiting a giant cyborg. "What, was that your intention from the very beginning, no matter which way you went? You have a child, wait until they were a toddler…and then just walk out of their life like it's a game or something? Parenthood isn't a game, Yui. It's rite of passage that changes you and challenges you to do the right thing. If you fail, you failed your child for life. But it's hard to fail a child if you were unable to start after something else happens that keeps you away from them. And I can't see myself as failing Shinji because of you."

Yui swore that if this…this woman that didn't do anything of any real significance say anything else like, _"You failed because you're not a real mother! It doesn't matter if there are no blood ties between you. If you took Shinji…only to leave him, then you're the biggest failure I know."_ , then she would kill her right there and then. Bite her head off and be rid of her. Nobody calls her a failure and gets away.

"Yui failed…because she kidnapped somebody else's child and caused his father to die from his injuries when he tried to stop her husband and her from taking his son," went Misato, feeling like the bones in her arms were breaking. "Even if she kills us, she'll still be a failure…because Shinji will never be hers."

Air bubbles escaped the Eva's mouth as she tightened her grip on them.

Cough! Shinji coughed…and Fusei couldn't feel his heartbeat near her chest.

"Shinji?" She spoke to him, but his eyes were closed. "Come on, Shinji. Say something, Shinji. Say anything! Shinji?"

Lilith could feel the life fleeing the body of the boy as a result of being squeezed too much by both her and Unit-01…but what bothered her…was his last thought as his heart started slowing down. It wasn't of any fear or despair as a result of being in a desperate situation or because he had been shot at. No, it was actually of peace; the comfort of being in the embrace of his real mother had left him numb to the pain he was in and he couldn't find the strength to stay awake. In the end, he only regretted not getting to meet the rest of his real family…and leaving her.

 _His soul lingers,_ thought the essence of Rei, _but his body's journey has ended for him._

Unit-01 had released its grip on the loosening grip of Lilith, allowing the two women to try and surface with Shinji's body. But then the Eva grabbed Fusei and dragged her back down.

Lilith felt nothing but rage and hatred in the purple Eva towards this woman that began her path to motherhood at an early age. All that coursed through this amalgamation of flesh and metal…was a drive to end her life.

 _Die,_ she heard the soul of Yui speak. _Drown in the abyss and die!_

But the Eva wasn't going to drown Fusei in the reservoir of LCL used to fulfill NERV's needs; the Eva was going to smash her under its hand until there was nothing left.

As Shinji's body floated in between the three whilst Misato was forced to swim away, Lilith's face started to contort.

 _I'm sorry, Shinji,_ Fusei thought as she felt her body being crushed by the Eva. _I failed you. I wasn't able to protect you or bring you home. I'm sorry, Genshi-teki. I failed you, as well. I couldn't protect our son. I failed you both. I'm so sorry._

" _He's happy for us both,"_ Lilith heard Fusei's memories of her time spent with her boyfriend during her pregnancy with Shinji after Second Impact. _"I love you both very much."_

" _Fusei, sometimes, I wish I understood you better,"_ her sister, Shinko-Kinomi, had once told her after their parents had found out she was pregnant.

" _Why better?"_ Fusei had asked. _"You understand me enough the way you do just by talking to me."_

" _I'm your big sister and I…I didn't safeguard you."_

" _Nobody but Genshi-teki and I are at fault. I own up to that."_

" _Are you sure you can handle a baby at such a young age? I mean, girls a bit older than you die during childbirth. I know it's just a statistic, but I don't want you to suffer."_

" _I'm not going to die…and neither is this baby."_

" _I'm not one to say this for something you did that was so reckless and after a natural disaster caused tremendous devastation just a few months ago, Fusei,"_ she heard the memory of her father four months after Second Impact, _"but I'm proud that you're taking responsibility for this new life you have inside you with Genshi-teki."_

" _I love Genshi-teki and he loves me."_

" _I know I'm probably asking you this at a bad time and everything, Fusei,"_ Lilith heard the memory of Fusei being with her boyfriend during her pregnancy's fourth month, _"but after our son is born, since we can't right now, will you marry me, Fusei Hitode?"_

" _I… Yes. Yes, I'll marry you, Genshi-teki."_

" _I can't believe you haven't exhibited any mood swings so far, Fusei,"_ her mother had told her daughter one day as she was examining herself in a mirror, feeling her swollen abdomen. _"I mean, you haven't yelled or complained about anything or anyone."_

" _I've never felt any reason to yell at anyone over anything there's no control over. And…I can't whine about the way I look right now. I'm not doing anything ridiculous that you see on television."_

" _It'd be typical if you were to complain about not being able to wear a bikini or something."_

" _Mother, you know I'm a one-piece girl. Not much to show. Shinko-Kinomi is the bikini girl."_

" _Fusei! Fusei!"_ The memory of her sister screaming her name as she and her lover had fallen down and were injured.

" _Ow…"_ The girl had whimpered over her injured leg and fearing for her unborn baby's life and the life of her future husband.

 _This woman has so much love in her heart and her past,_ Rei thought, watching the memory of Fusei giving birth to a baby boy, despite having a broken leg that didn't hinder her as much, aided and supported by friends and family.

" _Hey, there, Shinji,"_ she heard her as she greeted her newborn son.

 _Even when she lost people, her father and grandfather, even her lover, she didn't let it break her as much as it hurt her._

And then, as though she was now within the saddest memory of the woman, seeing everything happen as though she were actually there, Rei Ayanami…saw Yui and Gendo Ikari take the baby that was Shinji from his mother while she was slowly waking from her dead sleep…and as his father fell to the floor, unable to stop them because of his injuries.

" _My son!"_ Genshi-teki cried as someone came to help him up. _"Someone took my son!"_

 _The only hope she had that kept her going was finding their child and trying to establish some relationship with him,_ Rei realized as she saw Shinji's father breathe his final breath in his mother's arms. _A young woman that accepted her unplanned pregnancy, was willing to face the stigma of an unwed mother until she and her boyfriend could marry, ultimately shed blood just to meet her child, and every once in a while cry in her sleep, just wondering everyday if he was doing alright. What of you, Yui Ikari? What is it do you feel? What is it do you fear?_

Lilith grabbed the purple Eva with its regenerated arm and explored the memories of the woman that had committed the heartbreaking crime. This allowed Rei to see how Yui just took Shinji under the impression and false belief that Fusei was dead, faking her motherhood and passing the baby off as hers. But not once did Yui ever truly commit to the boy, even if she did everything a mother was supposed to do; she bottle-fed the boy, made sure he was sleeping well, knew enough about medicine to look after him herself, but none of that established any maternal relation with the child. And then, that horrible day came when the woman made the little boy (who, by that time, had been easily manipulated into thinking that she and her husband were his parents, and wholeheartedly loved them as though they were due to his young age) watch her last day as a person and what would be the rest of her life as a ghost in the shell, scarring him.

 _She didn't even consider the possibility that someone would come for him, thinking that anyone related to him was dead or had forgotten about his existence, making him an orphan,_ Rei realized, _an expendable orphan that nobody would miss and would do as she needed him to…just because she saw him as a means to achieve an impossible goal for her._

" _I love you, Mother,"_ she heard Shinji say to Fusei over the phone one time.

Suddenly, something had slipped out of Shinji's clothes and drifted away from him. It was a small, silver emblem with a red, corded thread tied around it. The emblem itself was some sort of avian creature. It sank down to where Fusei was pinned under Unit-01's hand.

"Shinji," she cried out. "Shinji!"

Looking back and forth between the dead boy and the woman that bore him, Rei, feeling something different inside her for the first time in her life, found herself wishing she could cry to understand the emotion she was feeling.

 _Is this…regret?_ She wondered; she wasn't sure how…but Rei now felt sympathy for Fusei…and sorrow for Shinji. _What…have I done? What have we done?_

It wasn't just regret she was feeling. It was shame. The boy whose mother she had felt threatened by was dead…and she knew whose fault it was.

 _Shinji…I'm sorry,_ she realized her role in this cruelty.

Grip! Unit-01 was grabbed by Lilith and forced to back away from Fusei.

 _We killed him, Yui,_ Rei believed, _and we must pay for keeping him from his mother._

 _Everything happens as it must,_ Yui responded.

 _Then what I'm going to do next must happen._

As Misato climbed out of the LCL, seeing that Units-02 and 03 were beheaded and lifeless, she thought of calling Ritsuko to try and get some form of backup from the JSSDF, except her phone was dead from having been in the LCL.

BURST! Unit-01 had emerged from the LCL, sent flying in the air, and slamming down on the two defeated Evas.

FLASH! The LCL in the artificial lake behind Misato glowed brightly, as though an electrical phenomenon were happening in the depths.

This went on for ten seconds before Lilith emerged from it, still wearing Rei's face, but with a saddened expression instead of an angry or vacant one. She looked down at Misato and pointed to the LCL as a body floated up.

"Take her…and go now," she ordered the purple-haired woman, and then waded out of the lake. "There has been enough sadness and death today."

Misato saw Lilith approach Unit-01 and fell atop it. She then ran over towards the lake and saw that it was Fusei, but she looked different; it was probably due to the LCL soaking them. Jumping in to get her, she pulled her out of the lake and quickly carried her out of there.

"Let her know…that I'm sorry for my misguided actions towards her…and that she deserved Shinji more than anyone else…and still does," she heard Rei say.

-x-

Asuka couldn't believe any of this was actually real. Some of it had to be fabricated. She couldn't believe, didn't want to believe that Shinji was just… It was just so unlikely.

"Is he really?" She asked Misato, hoping that she was just lying.

"We didn't go back for two hours," Misato explained. "The soldiers were arguing over who had the authority to take Commander Ikari. It eventually came to a coin toss…and the JSSDF lost to the police. They called for reinforcements and they entered Terminal Dogma. We had expected to find Lilith and Unit-01, but all we found was a rotting behemoth and a naked woman buried under its husk. I asked the soldiers to check the lake for Shinji…but all they found…were his clothes…and this."

Asuka looked at the phoenix charm that Fusei had lent to Shinji that was given to her by his father as Misato held it up in front of them.

"But…if all they found were his clothes, then…there must be a chance that he's…"

"I saw him, Asuka, and he was not looking too good after he was shot and resuscitated, and then he was in the LCL again…and being crushed by Unit-01 alongside his mother and I. Fusei begged for him to say anything to assure us that he was still with us…but he didn't do anything. He just… I think the pressure applied to him by the Eva was just too much for him to take."

Asuka then looked at the young woman inside the room they were outside of. Something else had to have happen, but she didn't know what.

"But what happened to Fusei," she wanted to know, "and who is this girl that you're waiting on to wake up?"

Within the room, looking as though they were sleeping rather than unconscious was a young girl, probably early-teens, shoulder-length dark hair, and a saddened look to her emotionless face right now.

"I didn't realize it until after I reached an elevator," Misato explained, "but when I put her down, I thought I was seeing things. But…Ritsuko did a DNA test on her. That's Fusei Hitode."

"But…that's not possible," Asuka stated. "She was thirty years old. This girl has to be at least thirteen or fourteen."

"We'll know for sure…when she wakes up."

Turning in her sleep again, the young girl, believed to be Fusei Hitode, groaned as though she were locked in a bad dream she was trying to escape from.

"I'm sorry," she uttered. "I'm sorry, Shinji."

To be continued…

A/N: I'm hoping that the next chapter will be the last one. Be on the lookout for it.


	17. Begin Anew

Creation began on 08-16-18

Creation ended on 08-24-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Begin Anew

A/N: Thinking of the right title was a challenge, but here goes the penultimate chapter.

Only family and friends were allowed up to see her. There were only the three of them that were close family and friends.

Tetsuo Katagiri, Shinko-Kinomi Hitode and Katsura Hitode, a childhood friend, elder sister and the mother of Fusei Hitode, respectively, as they came down the hall.

"Uh, Misato Katsuragi?" Tetsuo spoke to the purple-haired woman in front of them.

Misato turned around and faced the three in front of her.

"Are you three associated to Fusei Hitode?" She asked them.

"We are," answered Katsura to her. "Is my daughter alright?"

Misato bowed her head to her and then pointed to the room beside them.

"She's asleep in there, but…it's complicated," she explained.

"What do you mean, it's complicated?" Tetsuo asked. "Is Fusei alright or not?"

"It's best if you see for yourself."

They went into the room, but Shinko-Kinomi gasped at the young girl in front of them in the medical bed.

"Fusei?" She uttered.

-x-

"…Hey, we found another body here!" A JSSDF soldier called out as they were looking around the rotting body of Lilith. "It's the First Child!"

Rei Ayanami, or rather, the girl that was identified as Rei Ayanami, laid pinned under the neck of the Seed of Life that was Lilith.

"Are you alive?" Another soldier asked her. "Are you Rei Ayanami?"

"I am," she answered him. "Did you find…Commander Ikari and his wife?"

"The police have them."

"What of…Fusei Hitode?"

"At the hospital."

"And…her son?"

"We didn't find any kid."

"Not here…where he was ended. They took him from her…but I gave him back…so that he couldn't be taken again."

The soldiers pulled her free and escorted her out of Terminal Dogma.

"What the Hell happened down here?" One of them asked her.

"Ikari's wife wanted to change the world, but she needed a child of her own to do so. She feared she couldn't have one of her due to a car accident she was in a few years, so she resorted to surrogating her plans with a substitute child…and stole another woman's, a teenage girl's child, to exploit as her own."

"I think I read about something like that," went another soldier. "It was a few months after Second Impact. A baby-snatching was committed at a hospital in Tokyo. The people responsible were never caught and the case was considered cold."

But the case was no longer cold. The culprits were apprehended. They just got caught too late.

-x-

Opening her eyes for the first time since the attack, Fusei found herself in a hospital setting, smelling a lit incense's aroma source nearby.

 _I wish it was all a dream,_ she thought, feeling a bit weak, _but I can't erase the feeling of dread I had when I couldn't feel his heart beating. Shinji…I failed you._

"Hey, she's awake," she heard someone say. "Fusei?"

She rose up and looked at the people around her, recognizing her mother and sister and her friend, Tetsuo. Raising her left hand to wipe her face of what had to be dried tears, she stopped and realized something was off; her hand was…smaller than it had been before she was almost crushed by the Eva and her son was killed, about the size of a teen's hand.

"Fusei?" Katsura spoke up. "Do you recognize us?"

"Mother," she responded, her voice sounding younger than before. "Where…am I?"

"Shizuoka Memorial Hospital," Shinko-Kinomi explained. "This was one of the hospitals everyone that worked for NERV was sent to for medical aid."

"How…how long was I…I…" Fusei couldn't ask the question of how long she was unconscious, fearing that it might've been a while longer than what she suspected.

"The doctors and Ms. Katsuragi say at least two days, Fusei," Tetsuo answered. "Do you…remember anything? From before you woke up?"

She nodded that she recalled everything…and couldn't stop the tears from escaping her eyes.

"I should've left with him as soon as I made sure everyone else that couldn't leave had left," she uttered. "I was with Shinji…and I knew we should've left right then and there…but I failed him. And now he's gone because of me."

"No," Katsura told her daughter, "that's not true, Fusei. You didn't fail him. You never failed. You found him. You found him and made sure he knew who you were."

Outside the room, Misato and Asuka found this harder to accept than the redhead thought it would be.

"So, what happens now?" She asked Misato.

"At best, now that the police have Gendo and Yui Ikari, they'll be charged for their crimes and sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping Shinji all those years ago," Misato answered her. "At worse, it might be tough to prove to the world that this young woman is Fusei Hitode since she's thirteen again and no longer thirty."

"And you still think Rei did this to her?"

"Yeah, but I just don't understand why she did it."

Slam! They looked back into the room and saw the medical bed empty and the door leading to the bathroom closed; apparently, Fusei had gone into the bathroom quick.

"Fusei?" Shinko-Kinomi knocked on the door, concerned for her sister. "Are you okay in there?"

"Haaaurgh! Uuurgh!" They all heard puking noises in there before a toilet was flushed and water running. "Un-uh."

The door opened and the young girl stepped out, looking under the weather whilst holding her waist with her left hand as she wiped her mouth clean with her right hand.

"Why am I young again?" She asked them; she had clearly seen her reflection in the mirror while she was in the bathroom. "Well, younger."

-x-

It was all she really asked of them. All she truly requested when they brought her up to Central Dogma where Ritsuko Akagi was still present.

Rei Ayanami simply needed to see Fusei Hitode…and explain to her what happened before she herself was taken somewhere for her own involvement with Yui and Gendo's plans. She wouldn't contest any of the charges that might've been held against her, but she just wanted to make sure the woman was informed of her role in her current situation.

"What did you do, Rei?" Ritsuko asked her.

"Only what Commander Ikari and his wife wouldn't do," she answered, albeit cryptically.

"You went and physically regressed Fusei Hitode back into her teen years…and I have reason to suspect you caused the disappearance of Shinji's remains."

"Yes, his body disappeared…but it is not missing."

"Disappeared, but not missing?"

"Seen, but never seen. Protected, but has yet to be known to its protector."

Ritsuko then got the craziest assumption that this girl that used to be a part of Lilith went and did something that was unimaginable…and impossible.

-x-

"…Are we even sure that's a good idea?" Misato asked Ritsuko over the phone, standing outside of Fusei's room as the girl was being examined by a doctor. "The last time we saw Rei, she tried to kill us along with Yui."

"I saw it all go down," Ritsuko responded, "but it's all she really asked for. She knows where she's going to end up later, and she isn't going to fight it. She just wants to talk to her."

"I'll tell her, but there's no guarantee that she'll even want to speak to Rei (Misato looks at Fusei as she was getting her heart checked). Her physical regression hasn't altered her mental faculties; she still remembers everything that happened."

"But she doesn't know what Rei did afterward."

"What did she do?"

As Misato was getting the update, the doctor looking at Fusei got up and left.

"You seem okay, Ms. Hitode," he told the girl. "Uh, are you sure you're twenty-nine years old? You seem more like you're thirteen."

"I feel like I'm thirteen," she expressed, sounding depressed.

"You want to talk about it?"

"Recently, I lost someone dear to me. He was…very dear to me."

"Who was it?"

"My son, Shinji."

Misato then sighed and stepped into the room.

"Fusei, there's something I need to tell you," she informed the girl.

-x-

"Video monitoring is as close as you're going to get with Ms. Hitode, Rei," Ritsuko informed the girl as she setup the computer to do FaceTime with the tablet at the hospital in Shizuoka, "so, whatever it is you need to tell her, you tell her in front of me and the soldiers."

Rei accepted the terms and sat in front of the computer; she was just hoping that Fusei would hear her out.

Misato's face appeared on the screen, having established the FaceTime link.

"Rei? You're actually back to normal," she expressed.

"There was never such a thing as 'normal' for me," the albino responded, "but, yes, I am back."

"I spoke with Fusei…and she's willing to talk with you, but if you say something that upsets her, she's going to smash the tablet. So watch the way you speak to her. It's a real, trying time for her right now."

"I understand, Major Katsuragi."

Misato sighed and handed the tablet in her hands to the de-aged woman that looked a bit unwell.

"Miss Hitode," Rei greeted.

"Miss Ayanami," Fusei responded, her tone somewhat bitter; the girl was trying to hide it, but it was hard to keep her feelings in check because she was talking to the girl that shot and harmed her son.

"I am sorry for my actions against you and Shinji. I understand that no amount of talking will erase what I did…so I hope you will at least accept what I did upon realization that I was just causing you pain."

"You, Yui and Gendo were causing people pain with what was attempted. I don't understand what regressing me back to my early-teens does for anyone."

"I saw the memories of your past, Commander Ikari's wife's reasons for committing her unforgivable act against your family…and just did what needed to be done to rectify the act committed fifteen years ago."

"I still don't…"

"They took him from you," Rei cut her off gently. "I made sure…you would have him back in your life."

"We saw him die, Ayanami. Death is permanent."

"Not with Lilith or Adam. And for a time, I was Lilith when Shinji breathed his last breath. I saw his soul still lingering, trying to stay tethered to this world. Thirteen before… Fourteen after… Let only one part of history repeat itself without an echo of cruelty being committed."

"What… What are you saying, Ayanami?"

"Nobody can find his body…because you have it, along with his soul."

Fusei looked away from the tablet for a while, as if confused further, trying to put two and two together before returning to face the tablet.

"I…I gotta go now," she said, sounding conflicted. "Thank you for your call."

With the FaceTime connection severed, Rei had pretty much said all she needed to say to Fusei. Even if she didn't understand, the albino was confident that she would in due time.

"Rei," went Ritsuko to her as she turned away from the computer. "You didn't just cause a physical regression in Fusei, didn't you? You did a physical regression with Shinji's remains…and transferred them into her, didn't you?"

"If by that, you're asking if she's pregnant again with her son, then, yes, I did."

Ritsuko was stunned! Impressed, but stunned! Something of this sort was impossible, but it would've made sense, adding to Fusei's regression and why the JSSDF couldn't find Shinji's remains in Terminal Dogma.

"Why would you do that?" She asked her.

"Because, in the end, he was her son, and was within her rights to take him from the Ikaris once she found him. But other factors prevented her from leaving with him in the traditional sense, including myself. And…after Shinji died, I knew then that what the Ikaris wanted was not for everyone…and they were just out for themselves. So I did what I could to return him to his real mother so that she could be what they never were to him in his past."

"Some would interpret that as playing God, Rei."

"If that's what I did, then I'm glad I only did so once…and will never do again because Lilith is dead and nothing else will come from her."

-x-

"…What did that girl say to my sister?" Shinko-Kinomi asked Misato, as Fusei had locked herself in the bathroom after that FaceTime conversation ended.

"I don't know what Rei told her," she confessed. "She wouldn't tell anyone until after she spoke with her."

"Whatever she said to her has her really upset," Katsura told the woman. "Did you know that she's been in there for thirty minutes crying?"

"People can cry," stated Asuka to the ladies.

"Not like my sister, they don't," Shinko-Kinomi informed the redhead. "She only ever does this on Shinji's birthday…and the anniversary days that he was kidnapped and his father died, that our father and grandfather died. She's very emotional with these dates."

Suddenly, the doctor that had been examining Fusei returned from wherever he had been and got their attention.

"Um, I just…came back with your daughter's test results," he explained his reason for coming back. "Other than her past injury to her left leg being updated and her physical regression back into her teens, she's pretty healthy like before. Though, her hormone levels are a bit elevated. When was her last menstruation cycle?"

"We haven't seen her since she went to Tokyo-3 to find her son, so we don't know," Katsura spoke. "Why are you asking?"

"Because your daughter's pregnant, ma'am," he explained to them.

All of them, Misato, Asuka, Shinko-Kinomi, Katsura and Tetsuo each looked at the bathroom door and wondered if Fusei knew.

"Are you sure?" Tetsuo asked him. "I mean… She hasn't exactly…"

He didn't want to say it because he really loved Fusei like a sister and didn't want to believe that she went and fooled with some other man, even if it was only once.

"One of the female nurses drew blood for a pregnancy test, and it came back positive. But we found no trace of any recent sexual activity, and there's no record of her ever getting a recent AI procedure performed."

Meanwhile, in the bathroom, Fusei, having stopped her crying a few minutes ago, sat on the floor and had her hands on her waist.

" _What do you think he'll want to be when he grows up?"_ She remembered Genshi-teki asking her when she was seven months along, his hand pressed against her belly. _"A basketball player? A racecar driver? Working for Geek Squad?"_

" _Ah-ha-ha! Don't. Stop that."_ She had told him. _"Whatever it is he chooses to be, so long as it makes him happy."_

 _Though, I wouldn't have minded if he became an honest man,_ she thought, chuckling as she patted her belly.

" _Nobody can find his body…because you have it, along with his soul,"_ Rei had told her. _"Nobody can find his body…because you have it, along with his soul."_

 _Oh, my Kami,_ Fusei thought as the possible revelation struck her like lightning, and then moved towards the toilet as she felt like she had to vomit again. "Aaaurgh! Ugh! Urgh!"

Knock-knock-knock! Someone knocked at the door.

"Fusei, it's me, Tetsuo," her best friend spoke to on the other side. "We really need to talk with you about something."

Finishing her puking, the young girl washed her mouth of the residual bile and flushed the toilet.

"Just a moment, please," she responded, looking at her reflection in the mirror. _Uhh, if this is what I think it is, this is going to be a whole new experience for me._

She inhaled and unlocked the door to leave the room, seeing her mother and the others.

"Fusei," Katsura uttered, "the doctor said that you're pregnant."

"That was something I just realized myself," she told her.

"Do you…know how this…happened?" Shinko-Kinomi asked. "You didn't…do anything?"

"It was Rei Ayanami," the girl revealed. "She aged me back to my thirteenth year, the age I was when I first got pregnant with Shinji…and put Shinji back in my womb."

"Rei did what?" Misato asked her.

"Yeah, it's crazy to believe, but that's what she did, her way of making amends."

-x-

Locked in a solitary cell until she was fully processed wasn't doing well for Yui Ikari as she paced back and forth within said cell. Not only was she forcibly separated from the Eva by Lilith (or Rei, as she decided to call herself now), NERV had video evidence of her using the Eva to murder her father to keep him from getting to Shinji and Fusei. This meant that the police not only knew she was alive, but had committed murder against one of her family, which would've marked her for the death sentence.

" _Fortunately, your father had updated his will a few days before he was killed,"_ one of the policemen informed her. _"You and your husband have a whole list of charges that will put you away for the rest of your lives."_

 _We were so close,_ Yui thought, stopping in the center of her cell. _We were so close! The bright future for all of mankind! But that woman had to come to Tokyo-3! She just had to come looking for him! She could've had other children! What made Shinji so important to her?!_

Meanwhile, in a separate cell, Gendo was left to ponder his fate as it was laid before him. No matter what he did, no matter what he said, even if SEELE didn't get to him, he was going to rot in prison for the rest of his life. And not only were Adam and Lilith disposed of, Unit-01 was being dismantled and he was informed that Shinji was dead…and his death was being held against himself and Yui!

" _If there's no body, how do you know that brat is dead?"_ He had asked the police as he was being processed.

" _Your wife was declared dead, even though there was no body,"_ a policewoman told him before she threw him into his cell. _"It's the same here. Plus, we'll get the statements of the women that were there when he was murdered."_

 _Major Katsuragi, Ritsuko Akagi…and Fusei Hitode,_ he realized as they were the women present when the Third Child was killed, but he blamed the Hitode woman the most for her involvement in the way things went down. _I should've killed that bitch when I had the chance!_

-x-

"So…what happens now?" Fusei asked Misato as she, her mother and sister, Tetsuo and Asuka sat around her room in the hospital, three days later.

"We're pretty much in unknown waters right now," Misato explained. "Gendo and Yui Ikari will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, NERV will be disbanded, the Evas dismantled and any research on them erased. Undoubtedly, all personnel will be sworn to secrecy over the Angels, and go their separate ways."

"Well, that's nice to hear, but what about Fusei?" Shinko-Kinomi questioned. "Even if we told our friends about her current state, what's to stop a bunch of crazed lunatics from coming after her like she discovered the Fountain of Youth somewhere and treat her like a lab rat?"

"And what's to keep anyone with a mindset like this Yui Ikari from taking Shinji from her all over again?" Katsura added.

"You could just fake her death a bit," Asuka suggested.

"What?" Fusei asked her.

"Well, officially, NERV had a woman by the name of Fusei Hitode working for them as a doctor and computer technician. They don't know about a thirteen-year-old girl with the same name. I'm just suggesting you could fake your death in the sense that you died at NERV or was proclaimed MIA. Then it's likely that nobody would come after you or Shinji again."

"That won't be necessary, Ms. Soryu," they all turned to the door and saw Kozo Fuyutsuki.

"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki," Misato greeted. "What do you mean by it won't be necessary for Fusei to fake her death?"

"Everyone that was secretly in charge of the UN, including the funding of NERV and other agencies, are being hunted down like dogs and are facing a multitude of crimes against the world," he explained, meaning that SEELE, who had been the ones pulling the strings behind the United Nations for years, was being prosecuted. "Only a handful of people were ever in control of the world, and now the world knows who they are and what they did. Their only choices will be to either run or face the consequences. No doubt some of them will be running for years."

"It's hard to run in a world that's smaller because of less land to move on," Tetsuo stated. "Unless it's to places nobody else will go to, the ravaged ones where living is always hard."

"So, what should we all do until then?" Fusei asked.

-x-

 _Japan, Twenty-Sixteen_

"…It's good to see you back, Asuka," greeted Misato as she met with the redhead at the airport a few months later. "I still can't believe you got called back to Germany."

"I still can't believe I actually went back to Germany," Asuka responded. "I know I said I hated Japan back when I was piloting the Eva, but here was the only place I actually had friends."

"I take it that this time, you'll be staying around?"

"More or less."

"Nice to know your stepparents agreed."

"After a lot of negative press about the darker side of things with NERV and the UN, they didn't have much choice but to agree. They didn't want it getting out that they accepted bribes for taking me in when they wanted to dispose of me."

"You actually threatened them when they informed you about it?"

"Yeah… But, please, enough about me. What about you? What about Dr. Akagi or Rei? Kaji? Fusei? Shinji?"

"Well, Ritsuko vouched for Rei to stay on with NERV's genetic research division in the hopes of seeing how human she has become and may stay. So far, she's lost her blue hair color and her eyes turned brown. Kaji and I are trying to get back in the dating game, but I have my doubts that anything will change. Fuyutsuki's gone back into teaching over in Sapporo. The Ikaris… Well, you must've seen the news about them, right?"

"Yeah, I did."

Yui and Gendo Ikari were prosecuted for their crimes and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole and sent to separate prisons away from each other (which seemed more to punish Gendo than Yui, since he spent his entire career at NERV trying to get back together with his wife). Although the wife was primarily charged with the kidnapping of a tender-age child and murder of her own father, her husband was charged as an accomplice for the kidnapping and might as well have been involved in the murder of his father-in-law himself, as there were no statute of limitations on either crime committed, past and present. Their only defense was that they thought the teen mother was dead, not asleep, but they were only vitiated by the fact that they didn't bother to confirm whether or not Fusei was actually dead before they took her baby, not excused from the act or the following death of the child's father.

"What about Fusei?" Asuka asked Misato, wanting to know how the young woman was doing after everything that happened. "How has she been?"

"Well, you can ask her how she's doing yourself," she responded, implying that they were going to see the Hitodes now. "I saw her and Katsura last week, and they're still arguing over wall colors."

"How can they be arguing over wall colors? It shouldn't be such a difficult thing for them. I mean, it's either going to be white, blue, green or even red."

"Well, white has been the common color used by people…and red isn't a color Fusei is into like you are, Asuka. She's probably looking to forget about as much of NERV as possible."

"When you're a woman restored to your early-teens whilst retaining your adult mind, that's quite a challenge to achieve victory over."

Misato showed her to her Renault and drove across the open country after leaving the airport. The sight of the trees having brownish leaves indicated that they were going through the fall season after a lengthy summer (despite it being spring). It was due to the recent shift in the climate after fifteen years of being altered by the aftermath of Second Impact, and the planet was starting to return to its original axis. It would still be while before any winter seasons were sufficient enough to leave any snow on the ground anywhere in Japan, but the world was recovering after the Angels were defeated and Third Impact was prevented.

"You heard from anyone else while I was away?" Asuka asked, wondering if anyone kept in contact besides them.

"The first to keep in contact was Aida," Misato stated, "and he told Suzuhara, who told Horaki. They couldn't believe what had happened until it was explained to them, and Fusei and I had to swear them to secrecy about the shadier bits of the truth, about how the whole world shouldn't know about everything."

Despite the relief and reconstruction bills to repair Tokyo-3, more revenue was being generated around the lesser cities and towns and small attempts to rebuild the damaged cities along the coastal lines got more attention than the former fortress city. Some people preferred places such as the original Tokyo (now referred to as Little Tokyo after it was reclaimed for the time being), Osaka, Tokai and Nagasaki, as they had a more lived-in feeling.

"That otaku can't keep his mouth shut for anything," Asuka claimed.

"And he can't stop staring at Fusei, either," Misato confessed as they reached the rural town where about a handful of residents from Tokyo-3 relocated to when NERV was disbanded. "I hope Pen-Pen's doing okay with Fusei."

"Please, don't tell me you actually did what Hikari told me you did on the phone a week ago."

"Pen-Pen actually seems okay with his current predicament."

"So, where does Fusei live in this town?"

"Just up that hillside. She wanted a nice view of the ocean, made her feel calm and like she was at home in Tokyo."

"Whoa."

The Hitodes' rural residence was a rather large house that must've been able to support ten people, at least. It was a nice, two-story-tall, castle-like setting with a large yard separated from the land around it by its enclosed walls. And just across from it was a small cliff with a bench beside a large tree. It almost looked like something out of a dream.

"Hard to believe that the Hitodes live here now," Asuka confessed.

"Yeah," Misato agreed with her as she parked the car and they got out, just as the gate to the house opened, revealing Toji Suzuhara, dressed in a blue yukata, with a little girl with the same hair color as his, wearing a pink yukata.

"Hey, there, Misato," he greeted. "You're back!"

He saw Asuka and bowed his head to her.

"Hey, stooge," she greeted him. "How is everyone?"

"Playing with Pen-Pen after Shinko-Kinomi dressed him up again."

"Dressed him up?"

"Hikari thought it was funny…and Pen-Pen actually chose to keep it up."

"But it's hard on Ms. Fusei because she's not allowed to laugh so much," said the little girl, Sakura Suzuhara, to the redhead.

They went inside and saw everyone they knew around the warm-water penguin, dressed in a blue shirt, looking almost like a human to a degree, with a measure of embarrassment.

"Asuka?" The girl heard the voice of Fusei nearby, and saw the regressed woman sitting on a blanket on the grass, wearing a purple dress with her hair grown almost past the small of her back. "Asuka Langley Soryu? Glad to see you here. It's been a while since I last saw you."

"And you, Fusei," she responded, chuckling at her. "How's your belly?"

"My belly?! Don't you mean, 'baby'?!" Fusei reacted, not under the influence of her elevated hormones, despite her delicate state.

"She gets frustrated when people poke fun at her like this," Tetsuo, dressed in an orange yukata, expressed, sitting beside the young woman. "She yelled at me when I did. My ears still hurt."

"Are you sure that's Shinji in there?" Asuka asked, looking at her swollen girth. "Your stomach's a melon."

"Don't poke, please," Fusei warned her as she placed her left hand on her belly. "You'll scare him into a hyper-frenzy."

Only seven months pregnant with Shinji, Fusei looked as though she were ready to pop. Strangely enough, though, was how Fusei had suspected that, with the way her pregnancy was progressing, it was likely that Shinji would be born on his birthday, just as he had been over fourteen years ago, in the summertime.

"Do you really think she'll be alright this time?" Misato asked Katsura as they sat away from everyone else in the yard, wanting the mother's opinion about her youngest daughter.

"Yeah," she answered, looking at Fusei's happy smile. "She still has all of us, her family and friends, in her life. She might have lost Genshi-teki, but she found their son after so many years. And she knows that even if life becomes stressful, it's up to her to find a way to resolve the stress…in any way she can."

"Are you sure you're okay with her not doing anything except taking care of Shinji? I mean, it's only me saying this, but she doesn't seem like a stay-at-home-mom."

"She actually wanted to help down at the small clinic in the town, but I told her not to. Even after Shinji's born again, her priority should just be taking care of him. It's only because of this Shojiki Ikari that I want her to do right by her son. I never met him, but from what she told me, he was an honorable man that cared about people doing the right thing rather than what they thought was what needed to be done."

Prior to his murder, Shojiki Ikari had rewritten his will…and had left a large portion of his family's wealth to the Hitodes. His only words written in the will about why were, _"I saw these two young women separated by two different tragedies that befell them. One that feared she couldn't become a mother to a small child because of what had harmed her in the past…and the other that couldn't be a mother to a small child because of who harmed her in the present. Even as I can't confront the former, I found comfort in speaking with the latter, learning of who was responsible for her heartache when this blight was committed against her. It is my hope that when she's able to walk away from this madness with her son, she'll be able to build her life with him as intended until the cruelties of fate intervened"_. His surviving daughter didn't try to contest the alteration made to her father's will, as when she realized that the boy she had always thought was Yui's really wasn't, she backed away from the matter, as it was just something else she pinned on her sister for always needing to do something to prove she was the victim or was right about something.

If anyone was to suspect so, she probably had to reflect upon the fact that, for years ever since Yui had faked her death, she had done nothing but despise a kid that was just as much a victim of her sister's arrogance as their father had been.

" _If I had known from the start that he was someone else's child and not my sister's, I wouldn't have treated him like he was out of the disgust I had for her,"_ she had expressed one time.

"Oh!" They heard Hikari gasp as they saw her pull her hand away from Fusei's belly. "Someone's a little restless!"

"He heard that," Fusei told her. "He can hear all of you."

"And you still think he'll remember us all when he's older?" Kensuke asked her.

"If I didn't believe in that, I wouldn't be telling Shinji to kick every time I ask him if he remembers everyone's names and if he recalls inviting me over to Misato's for dinner. Ooh (she holds her belly)! See what I mean?"

"I was only out of Japan for six months and he still remembers me?" Asuka questioned.

"Care to feel for yourself?"

Sakura placed a hand on Fusei's belly and greeted, "Hello, Shinji."

She felt a small flutter.

"Heh-heh-heh! It feels all funny."

Asuka gave in and held up her left hand and placed it onto Fusei's belly.

"Hey, Shinji," she greeted the unborn child.

There was a small flutter beneath her palm. It reminded her of the first time they met a little bit…only she wasn't so dead set on piloting the Eva now…and he wasn't some timid kid that was once believed to be affiliated to some cold man that just cast him aside.

"It's funny, how I used to dislike him," she told Fusei. "Now…"

"You don't feel any dislike towards him," she responded.

"Yeah."

"That's a good thing."

"You are…unbearably positive."

"My great-grandfather was also like that, and do you know what his name was?"

Asuka, Hikari, Toji, Kensuke and Sakura leaned closer to the pregnant girl in anticipation of the mystery name.

"His name was also Shinji," she revealed to them.

"So, your son was named after your great-grandfather," Hikari realized. "Say, what would you have named him if he was a girl?"

"Kannazuki, after my boyfriend, Genshi-teki's grandmother."

"How is Fusei able to remain so certain that things will work out this time?" Misato asks Katsura as she sees the girl slowly get up and walk away from the others.

"Friends, family, memories of her first and only love," she answered. "Helps that she lives up to her nickname, Shinsetsu, meaning 'kindness', because ever since she was four, she's been the kindest child you'd ever know."

-x-

Just needing some time to herself right now, Fusei excused herself from the group at her house and crossed the path to sit on the bench beside the tree overlooking the ocean of the town below. Breathing in the ocean air while protected from the sun's rays by the branches over her head, she just thought back to the time spent at NERV, every second she had spent in the presence of her son.

"You ever think about my brother when you're out here?" She turned to her left and saw Tetsuo, walking over to her.

"Yeah," she answered, and patted the space beside her for him to sit on. "Thank you again for everything, Tetsuo."

"That's what friends do for one another, Fusei."

"No," she went, reaching for his right hand. "Not just friends."

He watched as she placed it on her belly.

"Family, too," she expressed, feeling Shinji kick again. "That is what we are."

Being reminded that he was going to be an uncle all over again put a smile on his face.

"You remember what you once told me the day your brother proposed to me?" She asked him.

"Yeah…I said that if you two got married, you'd be like my sister. We never had a sister, and you were the kid sister I never had."

"Even if Genshi-teki and I never got to that day, the rest of us might as well still be considered family, don't you think?"

"Yeah. How is it that you can be so positive all the time? I don't think I've ever seen you this cheerful…or hopeful."

"Honestly, right now…I'm actually just terrified."

"Terrified? What could you be terrified about?"

"That I won't be a good mother to Shinji; when I first held him in my arms, I merely thought about being a good mother to him, watching him take his first steps, hear his first words, deal with his first complaints, his worst fears and all the other trivial things people take for granted."

Fusei then fell into her friend's arms as he held her, tears falling from her eyes.

"There's so much I want to do for and with Shinji that I never got to fifteen years ago," she confessed to him.

Tetsuo just held her as she cried in his arms.

"You'll do alright," he assured her. "Even Shinji knows you'll do alright."

"Thank you again."

-x-

Summer had returned to Japan and it wasn't as hot as it used to. But it wasn't a pleasant day for one person.

"When did they bring her in?" Toji asked Hikari when he came to the hospital.

"Eight hours ago," Hikari answered. "Her water broke late last night."

"Crazy how he was born fifteen years ago today," went Asuka, who was also present along with Misato and Kensuke, "and he's getting born today."

"No matter how we choose to view it," stated Misato, "either chronologically or biologically, Shinji is Shinji, regardless of his age… Though, technically, today, his age is pretty much reset."

"I'm surprised you haven't had a single can of beer since I got back."

"I've given it up completely. Even if I don't live a long time, I intend to live long enough to at least see Shinji smile."

Suddenly, Kaji showed up, having left to the cafeteria to get a drink for Misato.

"They didn't have any apple juice, but I got you orange juice," he told her, presenting the alternate beverage.

"That's better," she responded, accepting the drink from him.

"Still nothing?"

"Nope," Kensuke revealed, "no update from the Hitodes yet, either."

"Doesn't Shinji have any respect for time?"

"Babies make their own schedules, Mr. Kaji," said Hikari to him. "They don't do as you ask whenever you ask them."

"You plan on having any children yourself one day?"

"Yes, eventually. Do you plan to have any yourself, Mr. Kaji?"

"That…is unknown at this time."

"He's only saying that because Misato's keeping him cut off for two years," Toji explained.

"Ouch," Kensuke uttered; if he had a girlfriend and she cut him off, he'd probably go crazy not being able to hold her.

"I'm guessing that you two are making your relationship work," Asuka stated.

Three minutes later, two more faces from NERV's past came by.

"Ritsuko," Misato greeted. "Fuyutsuki. Welcome."

"Did any of you see him yet?" Ritsuko asked them.

"I don't think he's been born yet," Asuka told her.

"How long has it been?" Fuyutsuki asked.

"Over eight hours," Misato answered him.

"Based on that, Fusei's probably only at six or seven centimeters."

"She's probably trying to keep her cool," Hikari suggested.

The door to the maternity ward opened up and Katsura Hitode walked out to meet them.

"I probably have some memory loss, because I don't remember it taking this long for Shinji to get born," she told them, bowing her head to Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki. "It's good each of you came today when we got here, though."

"How far along is she?" Asuka asked.

"Fusei still has three centimeters to go. She nearly broke a nurse's hand when the doctor suggested a C-section if she wasn't dilated enough."

"Shinko-Kinomi probably said nobody was going to cut her open unless it was absolutely necessary to do so," Fuyutsuki suggested.

"Yeah, she and Tetsuo said that. The doctor said you could see Fusei one at a time if you wanted. We're probably looking at another hour or two."

"How is Fusei taking her labor?" Misato asked.

"She's taking it calmly, though I think it has something to do with the fact that she had an epidural two hours ago. I worry the nurse that gave it to her gave her too much."

"Somehow, I doubt that if she's so calm about being in bed the whole time," Ritsuko shared her opinion about the girl's current state.

"Oh, she's not in bed right now," Katsura informed them, which caught their attention. "Shinko-Kinomi's helping her walk her contractions off."

"Isn't that…hazardous?" Toji questioned; he didn't know anything about what most pregnant women did during labor pains, but he got the feeling that walking was one of the things they weren't supposed to do.

"No, it's okay for her to walk or sit so long as she has somebody to help her. And it keeps her from getting bored."

"Forgive me for saying this, but your daughter must be the strangest person I know of, ma'am," Ritsuko confessed. "There's no way anyone can be this calm during labor and not complain about anything without screaming."

"Maybe you should see her first, Ms. Akagi."

Everyone else agreed on that, and the faux-blond woman was led to the room where the expectant teen mother was currently.

Ritsuko stepped inside and saw the pregnant girl being aided by her big sister to walk around the room.

"Are you sure you should be walking?" She asked Fusei as she was holding onto a support bar.

"It's okay," she answered her, sounding fine. "Shinji kicks me once to tell me I should stop and sit or lay down."

"When did they have purple gowns?"

Fusei, dressed in a purple version of the traditional hospital gown, sighed and explained that it was the only color they had at the time that wasn't dirty.

"That's Fusei for you," went Tetsuo, who was sitting in a chair across the room from the Hitode sisters. "She tries to see the positive in many things."

"Oh!" Fusei gasped, feeling a kick from Shinji, indicating that he wanted her to sit or lay down now, and she reached for a nearby chair. "See what I mean?"

"Some of us think Shinji's taking his time," Ritsuko explained.

"Oh, it's not Shinji. It's me. I'm…slow at dilating this time around."

"You sure you won't consider the C-section? It's optional."

"Eh-heh… I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, even if it was out of concern."

Ritsuko raised her hands in defense and gave up; she wasn't going to press this further, even if she wasn't truly concerned. This was a woman that had a smile capable of burning through an Evangelion's armor if she wanted to.

After her, Asuka came in and noticed how Fusei seemed…just a little too cheerful. She just chalked it up to her being influenced by the epidural she got and the fact that Shinji needed a mother that knew how to stay positive.

 _I still don't understand how a girl like this could be Shinji's mother,_ she admitted to herself; despite the way the boy was brought up by the Ikaris, the timid and spineless boy she had seen before the revelation was someone she simply couldn't imagine ever being related to someone else that wasn't anything like Gendo or his wife were. _Not a scientist, not a leader, never one for politics, and she's the one best qualified to do right by Shinji._

After she stepped out, Fusei was greeted by Hikari, who seemed concerned about how the girl was sitting in a chair instead of laying in the bed.

"Seven centimeters, Ms. Horaki," she told the pigtailed girl, and then grimaced a little. "Maybe I'm eight centimeters now. I'm going to lie down."

Shinko-Kinomi helped her out of the chair and back into the bed.

"Ah… I know I'll be screaming some later," she told them.

"Is your epidural wearing off, sis?" Tetsuo asked her.

"No. I screamed the last time this happened."

"You mean, the first time," Hikari corrected her; it was still weird that this young mother was going to give birth to the same boy for the second time in her life. "Is that weird, the way I said it? It sounds weird."

"Weird, confusing, an act of God," said Tetsuo. "It's all the same."

Hikari noticed a cup of crushed ice on the stand nearby and gestured it to Fusei, who nodded in the positive.

"Nervous?" She asked her as she gave the cup to her.

"Worried, actually," Fusei answered as she accepted it. "I was asleep last night, and my worst nightmare was where someone tried to take Shinji from me a second time. I don't want that to happen again."

"It won't happen again. Everyone you know and trust is here and there's security all over to keep out anyone suspicious. Nobody gets in or out without being monitored and everything…and the chances of anyone doing something like that to you for the second time are very slim."

"Except you don't know what people are going to do until after they do so," Shinko-Kinomi expressed, "which is why Tetsuo and I are nearest to her in the unlikely possibility that someone does attempt to take Shinji. Call it paranoia, but that craziness that lurks within people, it's unpredictable…and does nothing but hurt."

"Is it alright if I ask you something?"

"You may."

"How come you don't have any kids like Fusei here is about to?"

"I have yet to meet the right guy. All my friends are married, but I'm waiting for the love of my life. Like my baby sister here, I'm not looking for those one-time relationships. Not everyone wants a booty call or to try online dating."

"So, for now, there's…nobody?"

"The perfect somebody exists for you out there…and the only thing about them that is perfect…is that they're into you."

"Good luck to you waiting for them, Shinko-Kinomi."

"She's actually seeing this one guy that works part-time at the library," Fusei revealed. "It's nothing that big yet, but I think he's a keeper."

Hikari wasn't entirely perceptive of Fusei's behavior, but theorized that much of Fusei's positivity was due to her fear of the unknown; the fact that she never knew what was going to happen, she put on a smile to reduce her fear. She was certain it was also why she constantly wore that phoenix charm her boyfriend gave her when they were dating, anything that gave her courage to deal with the fear of the unknown.

"Oopfh!" Fusei grimaced, holding the handrails of her bed, feeling like her stomach muscles had tightened. "Uh, can someone get the doctor just in case, please?"

-x-

"You have some nerve letting this happen, Rei?" Gendo, showing contempt towards the girl in front of him as she held the phone to her left ear; for the last seven months, the former First Child of NERV had been visiting both he and his wife at their prisons, and each time she did, she looked less like an albino and more like a younger version of Yui herself.

"Do you know what day it is today?" She asked him, not the least bit intimidated by him. "Heh, he's due today."

Of all the things she could've brought up, Rei had to bring up Fusei's son, whom she had informed to both Gendo and Yui that she had returned him to the woman's womb before his soul left this world.

"Why should I care about that brat?" He asked her.

"Because you two are the worst examples of fake parents," she answered, "and this is to remind you that it's all our faults, mine, yours and Yui's, that he and his family suffered. When I went to see Yui, she seemed to slip into her delusion that Shinji was still hers, no matter who he's with. Seeing Shinji and Fusei's memories, I had my eyes opened for the first time in a long time to the hurt they were dealt and made me realize that, regardless of what was desired by the both of you, none of what you wanted was right for everyone, whether their hearts desired it or not. People were meant to be separate, in life and in death. You both believed the world to be full of pain and suffering, but for different reasons. Yui because she believed that she had to be right about everything she either said or believed in…and you because you believed nobody ever loved you. You wanted the world to end so that only you and Yui could be together, never to be separate again, and she wanted to put everyone's fate in the hands of a young man you both manipulated into believing the world was a bad place because everything and everyone dies in the end. But Fusei's return into his life changed his perception of the world. He chose to believe that so long as she was involved in his present and future, the world out there wasn't so cruel, anymore. She became his pillar of hope in the world because she is his mother, someone the both of you wanted to remove so your control over Shinji wouldn't be hindered, but it was hindered the second she found him, spoke to him, wanting to know about everything about him."

"And you pitied the both of them because they were separated for so long?"

"No. I pitied you because neither of you could ever have what Fusei has with Shinji, and I'd be insulting them if I was to compare you to this man that is Shinji's father, this…Genshi-teki Katagiri, who, from the girl's memories, was a man content with his life and with the mother of his child. He was going to marry her once they had recovered from their physical injuries, wanting to be with her and their son. You weren't the only one that loved someone that loved you…or what you thought was love."

"You're crazy."

"No, I was exploited; being exploited by you two made me crazy. I'm not that way, anymore. You should know that…and something else I think is relevant. I'm dying."

"You're dying, and you think that's relevant?"

"Yes, for it has given me a lot to reflect upon. I've had a lot to reflect upon."

"And I've had nothing but time to reflect on everything in here."

"Shinji had nothing but painful memories ever since you two left him alone. Fusei had only her fear of never finding him because it was so hard to find him over the years. And she kept going, kept smiling, because she wanted to find him and take him home, no matter what state he was in, alive or dead."

"And you made it so that she could just walk away with him, knowing full well that we had need of him first."

"What you call a need for him was not a need at all. To you, he was nothing more than a sacrificial pawn in your wicked chess game, same as I was. To quote a song lyric I heard recently, _'I had strings, but now I'm free'_. We're both free of you."

"Only until someone goes after that little bitch and takes her brat a second time!"

"Nobody even knows where they are. Not me, not SEELE, or whatever's left of them, not even Yui knows where they are. And nobody wants to go to prison for kidnapping or murder, so they dare not commit them. I have reason to believe that things are going to be better this way so long as Adam and Lilith are gone and nobody dabbles with the science used to create the Evas."

Gendo frowned at her, really wanting to grab her by her neck and snap the bones in it.

"Anyway, Dr. Akagi estimates that I may have at least four years left to live. I don't really intend to do much with that length of time, just see the world outside of Japan. When my end comes, I'll just accept it. What do you intend to do when your time comes?"

"There's nothing to do. Every day I'm in here, I have to spend twenty hours in a cell with no window, thirty minutes in a cafeteria for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the remaining time of the day in the library looking at used books and listening to the news of what's happening out there. Do you really think you've changed anything? Do you really think there's any hope left in this world just because you decided not to do what you're supposed to do? There's no hope left. There is no hope left!"

"You and people like Fusei Hitode have very different interpretations of what hope is."

"Why don't you just say what you really want to say?"

"Because there's nothing left for me to ask that relates to what you wanted to happen. It's as NERV's logo stated before it was disbanded: _'God's in his Heaven. All is right with the world'_. The gods have all returned to their dominions in Heaven and all is returning to right with the world. I'll be going now. I try to think about them, you know. Fusei and Shinji, and what they're going through. I know I'll never see them again…and I'm okay with that. I hurt them. Even though I returned them to one another so they can start over with a clean slate, I can never forget how I crossed the line because of you two. It's too late for the three of us, but it'll never be too late for those two."

Rei hung up the phone and got up to leave.

Gendo fumed and yelled something, but because the glass was soundproof, the former First Child of NERV couldn't hear a thing…and she didn't want or need to.

-x-

"Oh," Fusei went, feeling like she was about to have an accident soon. "I think he's about ready to leave his room."

"Right now?" Katsura asked her daughter as the doctor checked her dilation.

"Uh-huh."

"She's a few minutes there," he announced.

Outside the room, everyone else waited to hear an update. There was a silence where they were just wondering what was taking so long, why Shinji was taking so long and what Fusei was going through in there. They could hear what sounded like a muffled screaming, indicating that Fusei was straining in her labor…and then nothing.

A few more minutes went by until Shinko-Kinomi came out and gave a peace sign with her left hand to them.

"Happy Birthday to Shinji," she expressed.

-x-

As Fusei slept the sleep of exhaustion, Tetsuo, Katsura and Shinko-Kinomi kept watch over Shinji as he also slept sometime after his mother did.

"He looks a little bigger than when we last saw him," the paternal uncle expressed.

"Yeah, he does," the grandmother agreed, feeling his tiny left hand. "It's still nice to have him with us again."

Shinko-Kinomi nodded and looked away from the bassinette and towards her sister.

 _You did well, Fusei,_ she thought, placing her right hand on the young mother's chest. _You did real well._

"Gur," she heard a small, gurgling sound from the bassinette.

Shinji, feeling something big in his tiny hand, had awakened to see faces he had only seen in what felt like a lifetime ago. He felt a sense of welcoming from these people that was very warming to his heart.

Fusei, who felt like she hadn't slept for too long after the birth, slowly opened her eyes and looked over at her family as they were all admiring Shinji.

"Who woke up first," she asked, getting her mother's attention, "me or Shinji?"

"Shinji did," she answered, pointing to the baby, "though that was my fault."

She gave her a weak smile, still clearly wiped out, and rose up in the bed.

"Did everyone else see him?"

Tetsuko raised his left hand and stated, "Miss Horaki was taken by Shinji so much that I think she might want to have kids herself sooner than later."

"I hope you're just joking."

"Yeah, just about the last part. She and Asuka wouldn't stop holding his hands, though."

Fusei gave a weak laugh; mentally, as best as she determined, giving birth a second time as a teenager seemed more trying as it had been the first time she did it. Even if she had a few more hours to rest up, she'd still be out of it.

"How do you feel?" Katsura asked her.

"Lousy," she answered. "Happy, though."

"That's how every new mother feels."

"Uh-oh," Shinko-Kinomi went, looking at her sister with a guilty expression. "Someone has their hungry face on."

Fusei nodded as she opened her gown up to expose her left breast while her sister carefully picked Shinji.

"What time is it?" She asked.

"A little after midnight," Tetsuo answered. "June Seventh, Twenty-Sixteen, in case you were wondering about the date."

Now holding him, the young mother smiled as slipped the teat into her son's mouth.

"Brings back memories of the first time?" He asked her.

"This is the first time," she told him, "all over again. And, yes, this does bring back happy memories of the first time."

"Hmm," they heard Shinji as he ignored the world around as he focused solely on nursing.

"Well, a nursing baby is a happy baby," Katsura expressed.

 _And a nursing mother is a mother at peace with herself and the world around her,_ Fusei thought as she held Shinji closer to herself. _Any mother happy to hold her child is a good mother._

To be continued…

A/N: Be on the lookout for the last chapter.


	18. All the Starfish are closer

Creation began on 08-24-18

Creation ended on 02-19-19

Neon Genesis Evangelion

All the Starfish are closer

A/N: The epilogue.

"Shinji, did you clean your room?" Fusei asked her son as he sat down at the table for dinner that night.

"Yes, Mother," he answered with a smile.

"Shinji always cleans up his room before I finish cleaning mine," a younger girl with blue bangs in front of her dark, waist-length hair expressed; she was probably around eight or nine years old.

"That's because your cousin's older and not as clumsy, Yugana," said Shinko-Kinomi to her daughter as she set the bowls on the table.

It had been almost fifteen years since the paramilitary agency NERV was disbanded and the United Nations restructured after select individual members were apprehended to go along with the recovery of the world. In that time, Shinji had lived a relatively-happier life with the Hitodes since his rebirth; he still retained his memories of his previous life, but didn't think much of it because he was, by all intents and purposes, a fourteen-year-old boy without any sense of pain.

Fusei's sister, Shinko-Kinomi, had ended marrying the guy she was seeing that worked part-time at the library in town five years after Shinji was born and had a daughter with him that she named Yaguna. While she didn't see her husband as much as she used to two years ago, Shinko-Kinomi still managed to make their relationship work since the elder sister was pregnant again.

"It seems like your father will be home tonight, Yaguna," Shinko-Kinomi told her daughter.

"Really?" The little girl asked her mother.

The sound of a door opening and closing was heard and a male voice came after.

"I'm home, everyone," he announced.

"We're about to eat," they responded, and saw a man in gray slacks and a blue shirt, his hair salt and pepper and his eyes green.

He came over and sat next to Shinko-Kinomi and Yaguna.

-x-

"…I still can't believe we all agreed to see this movie again," a thirty-year-old Kensuke Aida said to Toji and Hikari as they sat in the theater with old friends and relations.

"We rarely get to see each other these days," Hikari reminded him. "Plus, this will be the last time Toji and I will be able to see a theater film for a while."

Shinji, hanging with his friends in the theater, turned to face the older woman and asked, "Is it a boy or girl?"

Hikari, hands on her swollen belly, responded, "Both, Shinji. We're having twins."

"That's nice."

As the movie began, the silence crept in, and Shinji, despite the large gap between himself and his friends, was happy for them as they had moved on with their lives.

Toji and Hikari had gotten married right after they had graduated from high school and settled into their professions as a basketball player and a kindergarten teacher and had just started their family life five months ago.

Kensuke had joined a medical research company called Medical Angel and recently joined a small project there to develop living skin formulas for people with prosthetic limbs. Two years ago, he ended up in a romantic relationship with a bookworm of a woman named Mari Kagayaki, who rarely talks about her personal life because of Second Impact, but Kensuke was optimistic about getting to know her (something Shinji got the feeling that her past was somewhat traumatic and the woman was still trying to escape it).

And Asuka, unlike her past as an Evangelion pilot, had transitioned over to a career as a seamstress, something far removed from what she used to do. Although Shinji suspected that she was doing something else with her time that was just as much to her liking, but he wouldn't poke his nose into her privacy."

" _How have you been, Shinji?"_ He recalled Misato asking him when he saw her last month.

" _Life's been good to me, Misato,"_ he told her. _"How about…you and Kaji?"_

" _His job as a PI causes me some undue stress. Sometimes, I think he should've just taken a job at Medical Angel, less stress for me."_

Of course, Misato only said that because she was pregnant for the second time when he saw her. Three years after Shinji was reborn, Misato and Kaji had finally gotten married and a year later, they had a daughter named Kasumi. Now, they were getting ready for a boy.

While he did have a few friends his age, Shinji still enjoyed the company of his older friends, every minute he could, even though they had lives of their own, probably something that would follow him to the ends of time. But…Shinji couldn't change this part of how he felt around old friends, even if he wanted to…and he didn't. He just went with it for what it was worth.

"Hey, baka," he heard Asuka say to him; of course, that designation she had was just her form of endearment and not disgust, "could you pass the popcorn, please?"

"Sure," he responded and gave her to bucket of popcorn.

-x-

"…I figured I'd fine you here…Rei Ayanami," went Ritsuko Akagi to the woman sitting against a small tree in the park in what was proudly declared a reclaimed Tokyo after several operations over the last decade to reclaim the coastal lands and produce artificial island landmasses when the planet returned to its original axis.

The woman, resembling Yui Ikari to a sight degree, but was actually Rei Ayanami, had managed to extend her shortened lifespan through periodic monthly injections of modified LCL, allowing her to see more of the world after putting her affairs in orders. It was only after the former albino's brief trip to Mt. Everest did Ritsuko even hear of Rei returning to Japan, but she didn't return to the former NERV facility for more injections. This meant Ritsuko, despite her working relationship with the former Evangelion pilot that was just getting adjusted to living, had to go find her, and here she was in the gentrified park.

"Rei?" She spoke again, but the woman didn't respond.

She reached down and checked her neck for a pulse…and sighed over the discovery that she was dead…and had likely died a few hours ago.

"At least you got to enjoy your life while you still could," Ritsuko uttered to the dead woman, noticing a small smile on her face. "I wonder what your last thought was about."

-x-

"Welcome home, Shinji," went Katsura to her grandson as he took his shoes off and slipped into his slippers. "How was your day out there?"

"It was okay," he answered her. "My friends and I just went to see that new movie everyone was talking about."

"You mean that superhero one that came out last week?"

"No, it was the romance one from a week earlier, with the long-distance relationships."

"How was it?"

"Honestly… The couples that were portrayed weren't as believable as I originally believed. There were moments where they each wanted to call it quits and move on, but they couldn't walk away from their respective love interests. I think we were better off watching the superhero film instead, that or an old _Godzilla_ film."

"So, I take it the romance film would be a waste of time for me to go see, Shinji?" They heard Fusei ask as she stepped out of the living room, holding her tablet with a digital romance novel.

"It's only my opinion, Mother," he stated. "I just couldn't believe in the couples that were involved. The ending wasn't that bad, but there was no solidity in the structure."

"You were more into _Godzilla_ than anything else."

"I was also into the earlier incarnations of _Gundam_."

"You two and your preferences," Katsura expressed to the two.

"Hey!" Fusei and Shinji reacted at the same time, mildly offended by that remark.

"You two can rarely dislike the same thing, let alone agree on what is good about one thing and what is awful on another."

" _Shin Godzilla_ made Godzilla look terrible while Legendary Pictures gave him his royalties back," mother and son both expressed one of their shared beliefs.

"Okay, we all can agree on that," Katsura responded.

" _The Crow_ , still one of the greatest films ever made," Shinji told her.

"Yeah, that one, too," Fusei added.

-x-

There was no point in telling Yui that Rei was now dead as Ritsuko stood before the woman's grave, just as there was no need to tell Gendo, as he was killed in prison four years ago when a riot took place…and several of the inmates, men in former positions of power that were ruined because of him and his wife, jumped him. She wasn't even sure why she decided to have the girl buried instead of cremated; part of her reasoning was probably because she felt the former pilot of Unit-00 deserved to be remembered in some form or another.

"Good luck on the other side, Rei Ayanami," she told the grave marker.

-x-

The thing about old memories for Shinji that sometimes kept him up at night…was that some the ones that snuck up on him during his sleep were the ones he wanted to forget completely. Just two hours ago, he awoke from a nightmare where he saw Unit-01 and Lilith chase after him on a lonely highway at night, similar to the ones he had fifteen years ago. The only difference between then and now was that in his recent dreams, they were further away from him and kept falling down…and he was riding his bike as fast as he could to get away from them as he saw his house, a place they couldn't get in.

 _Fifteen years,_ he thought as he looked out his window at the bluish-gray sky. _Sometimes, I think the hardest part about remembering my life as a fourteen-year-old…is remembering the previous past that was full of hurt._

Sighing, he decided to get up since sleep wasn't going to come back to him. He came out of his room and walked down to the kitchen, where he saw his mother sitting at the table with a cup of tea in her hands.

"Couldn't sleep, either?" She asked him, seeing him standing there in front of her.

"Woke up two hours ago," he explained. "I still get ridiculous nightmares."

"Same here, Shinji, and they're the same each time."

"I thought you still got those dreams of being with Father."

"I do…heh…just not as much as I used to. And I still keep track of them. I've had one-thousand-seventeen of them and counting."

"Somehow, I don't think I could keep track of that many dreams if I were the one having them."

"Maybe when you meet the one for you, you'll be keeping track of memories of your happy moments in the form of dreams, perhaps."

"Well, I don't know much about meeting the one for me, but…I did sort of meet someone while leaving the theater…and she was actually happy to see me there."

"Oh, really, Shinji, is that right? What was she like?"

"She's about a year older than I am, probably two-three inches taller than I am, with waist-length, dark brown hair, grey eyes and…a pleasant smile. You know, a…a nice girl."

"Sounds like a little crush you have," Fusei expressed her opinion. "Did you manage to catch her name before you parted ways at the theater?"

"Yeah," he answered her. "Rumiko Gaidoku."

"Well, here's to hoping that one day, you two end up being good friends."

"Yeah…I'd like that."

-x-

"…So…Shinji was a boy you once looked after when he was a baby?" Kasumi asked Misato, trying to wrap her head around the relationship her mother had with this teenager she knew from long ago.

"No, it was fifteen years ago," Misato explained to her daughter again, "when he was the same age he is today. When we were in Tokyo-3, everyone I worked with thought we knew who his parents were, only to find out that five giant monsters after he arrived to the city, a woman showed up to work at my old workplace, and it turned out that she was his mother the whole time. It was quite a shocker when I found out."

"But…if his mother was looking for him, then why was he with other people?"

"You see, dearest, he was…taken from his mother when he a baby."

"You mean Shinji was adopted?"

"No, not adopted. Fusei, his mother, never had any intention on giving him up to somebody she didn't know. You know about kidnapping, right?"

"Yeah, Daddy says that's when people take children that aren't theirs… So, Shinji was kidnapped when he was a baby. That's awful."

"Yeah, and it was by the people we had thought were his parents. But in the end, the truth came out, and Shinji was returned to his mother while the people that kidnapped him were taken to jail where they couldn't do it again."

"But…you said that Shinji got hurt while he was leaving, right? And he was…fourteen. So, shouldn't he be…as old as you and Daddy are?"

"Well, yes…but at the same time, no, sweetie. The day everyone was leaving work, Shinji had to…go further away than the rest of us did when he got hurt. For him, time came to a stop and he to take a long break from everything until the summer of Twenty-Sixteen."

"Oh, you mean like a fairy godmother or godfather turned him back into a baby so he could be with his mother again, like in a funny fairytale."

Misato found that analogy to be creepy, but somewhat within the realm of acceptability. In a fairytale sense, Shinji had been turned back into a baby and reborn to Fusei, who was de-aged back to her early-teens when she had gotten pregnant with Shinji, making it seem similar to a fairytale with a positive twist over a negative one. While this made the mother, chronologically, over forty and her son almost thirty, it wasn't in any other way of thinking a form of immortality. Even Misato had to laugh at the thought of these two outliving everyone else on the planet when it was undesired over just wanting to be together.

"What was Shinji like when you met him, Mommy?" Kasumi asked Misato.

"He was…not what I was expecting in a teenager," she explained to her. "He hadn't been informed of the situation he was going to be helping us resolve, and he seemed to have no interest in women at the time like boys his age do."

"You mean, he didn't look at you when you wore your favorite dress and fall head over heels for you? That would've been too easy."

"Yeah, too easy, even for me. He was also deprived of any love from people as he grew up, leaving him, in a way, socially inept, not comfortable around others. Even as time went by, he didn't make that much progress, not with what he was doing half the time for the world. It was only after he saw Fusei did he…feel like he could actually enjoy life."

"And Fusei, what was she like when you met her?"

"She seemed unlike anyone I had ever met at NERV. She was a computer expert with a degree in medicine, and she was skilled in coding. There was an autopilot system that had been intended to replace the children so they could return to their lives, and she gave it a conscience when it came to fighting and being unwilling to endanger people. After that, things got a little bad as they were getting better, but in the end…things got better."

"But some people still got hurt, right?"

"Yeah. Maya Ibuki was injured, but she recovered after NERV was shut down. A few people died, but less than what we had expected after Fusei joined us."

"And what was that story based off the situation of your previous job?"

"Your father called it _'Bloodless Ties, Orphan of Hurt'_. The 'bloodless ties' aspect comes from the fact that Shinji wasn't related to the people he lived with that he was led to believe he was. The 'orphan of hurt' aspect stems to the delusion that, because Shinji wasn't related to the people we all thought he was before we met Fusei, Shinji was no different from a child without parents…and would have to live with a degree of pain."

"But he doesn't have to, anymore, does he?"

"No," she answers, looking over at a picture taken by Fusei back before NERV's shutdown. "No, he doesn't."

It was a photo of Shinji, Fusei, Misato, Asuka, Pen-Pen, Kaji and Ritsuko (both had to be dragged in by Asuka and Misato, respectively, in front of a wall with the NERV logo that became partially obscured by the people in front of it.

"You're happy for Shinji, aren't you?"

"I am."

They heard the door to their apartment open and close and a male voice uttering, "I'm home, lovely ladies."

"We're in the living room," the mother and daughter responded to the husband and father.

"Has Haruo been behaving himself?" Kaji asked them as he walked into the room.

"All he really does is sleep in Mommy's tummy," Kasumi stated obviously, pointing to her mother's melon-sized melon. "We have to wait another month before we can meet him."

Misato just chuckled as she placed her hands upon her belly.

 _Well, Shinji,_ she thought, _the one thing we both love is also the one thing that's complicated._

By "complicated", Misato meant "family"; she loved hers dearly, but there were times where the antics they committed made her want to sleep.

-x-

In his room, looking at his old photos, Shinji chuckled as he felt the peace of his life envelop his heart.

"Happy days," he told himself, writing in his diary about his day. "All the starfish are closer."

Beside his left hand was one such photo of Shinji and Fusei that was taken when he was three, with big smiles on their faces.

Fin

A/N: Well, we're finally at the end of the journey here. To those of you that stuck by until the end, I thank you. Whatever you wish to ask me about what might've happened to the other characters of this story, I'm available for talking through the private messenger. If any of you think I should include Fusei in a future story, feel free to ask me about her. See you later.


End file.
